LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Cluip..Ei! Copyright No..42iX. 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Bg t\)t same autljor. 



In the Land of Lorna Doone. 

l6mo, gilt top, $1.00, 

The delightful flavor which is cliaracteristic of all 
these papers is manifestly due to the fact that on the 
one hand, the writer's mind is saturated with historical 
and literary associations ; while on the other hand, he 
has a keen, we might almost say, a painter's eye for 
the beauties of scenery. — JVczu York Sun. 

At Hawarden with Mr. Gladstone. 

l6mo, gilt top, $1.00. 

The initial essay of Mr Rideing's choice little book 
is such a striking piece of portraiture that one would 
wish to continue longer in Mr. Gladstone's company 
in the peaceful retreat into which the author has given 
us such an alluring glimpse. The six papers that fol- 
low are vivid bits of description. The author throws 
his scenes into good perspective by a background of 
historical and literary association. — Evangelist. 



T. Y. CROWELL & COMPANY. 



THE BOYHOOD 



FAMOUS AUTHORS 



WILLIAM H. RIDEING 

AUTHOR OF "THACKERAY'S LONDON," ETC. 



" The spirit of a youth 
That means to be of note." 

Shakespeare 



NEW YORK: 46 East Fourteenth Street v) T * 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

BOSTON : 100 Purchase Street 



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LiJ 

^ PREFACE. 



This little book having run entirely out 
of print, a new edition has been prepared, 
which it is believed will be found more 
attractive than the earlier ones. Some of 
the authors represented in the first edi- 
tion having- passed away (Holmes, Lowell, 
Whittier, and Boyesen), the title has been 
changed from " The Boyhood of Living 
Authors " to the more comprehensive one 
of' " The Boyhood of Famous Authors." 
New chapters on Robert Louis Stevenson 
and Rudyard Kipling have been substi- 
tuted for others deemed less iriterestino- ; 
and portraits of the authors, together with 
their autographs in the form of original 
letters or extracts from their works, have 
been added to the embellishments. What 
was said in the preface to the first edition 



IV PKKFACE. 

may be repeated now : Every chapter has 
been prepared with the approval, and in 
most cases with the assistance, of the au- 
thors represented, and may therefore be 
taken as entirely trustworthy. 

WILLIAM II. RIDEING. 



COXTEXTS. 

^ PAGE 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES i 

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 'f i6 

JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE ."..... 28 

WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL 39 

EDWARD EGGLESTON 52 

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 64 

JAMES PAYN 76 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 92 

FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON m 

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 121 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 130 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ........ 140 

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN i55 

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 170 

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 178 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 187 

RUDYARD KIPLING . 200 



BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

There is a pleasant little house in Bea- 
con Street, Boston, which is occupied by a 
gentleman who has written some books 
which have made his name famous wher- 
ever the English language is spoken, and 
also in many other countries into the lan- 
guage of which they have been translated. 
As he goes along the streets of the town, 
with a friendly, observant eye, which has 
a bird-like quickness, people who see him 
whisper — those who are unmannered point 
at him — and say, " See, the Autocrat ! " 

He is probably referred to thus as often 
as by his proper name ; and this is because 
one of his books is called "The Autocrat 
of the Breakfast Table," a volume full of 



2 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

wisdom and humor, which on one page 
moves us to tears, and in the next sets us 
shaking with laughter. He is a rather 
slender gentleman, with white hair, though 
no one would ofuess him to be over seven- 
ty-five ; and the wavy white hair on his 
head is matched by white side-whiskers 
of an English cut. He is not distinctly a 
writer for the young ; writing of any kind 
has not been the business of his life, in- 
deed, and aside from it he has made him- 
self famous in the medical profession : but 
there are few boys or girls who, though 
they may not have read " The Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table " all through, do not 
know by heart "The Chambered Nautilus" 
and the story of the deacon's " One-hoss 
Shay." 

" Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay 
That was built in such a logical way ? 
It ran a hundred years to a day, 
And then, of a sudden, it — Ah, but stay ! 
I'll tell you what happened without delay ; 
Scaring the parson into fits. 
Frightening people out of their wits, — 
Have you heard of that, I say?" 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 3 

It is Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes I am 
speaking" about ; one of the two survivors 
of that splendid period of American litera- 
ture which gave us Longfellow, Motley, 
Emerson, and Lowell. 

The doctor's study in the house in 
Beacon Street looks out over the Charles 
River ; and it is a question whether the 
view from the windows is more beautiful 
at night, when the electric lights on the 
bridge cast their reflections on the water 
like javelins of glittering silver, or in the 
day, when the gray stream flowing to the 
sea, and the spires and towers of Cam- 
bridge, with the green hills of Arlington 
and Belmont beyond, are visible. It is at 
all times a view of which Boston people 
are ver)^ proud ; and, aside from its beauty, 
it has the added interest to the doctor of 
encompassing nearly all the scenes of his 
youth, and of his manhood too. 

He was born at Cambridge, and went to 
school at Cambridgeport, and both of those 
places are in sight from his windows. All 
his past is unfolded there ; and when he 
turns from the book or manuscript on his 



4 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

desk, near which hangs the portrait of 
his renowned ancestress, " Dorothy O.," 
he can see the paths his feet have followed 
since the beofinninof. 

He can see himself at various aees : the 
urchin straggling to school, through fields 
which are green only in the memory now ; 
the Harvard student ; and then, in one 
person, the college professor and the fam- 
ous author. No doubt he finds it hard 
to believe that the urchin was not another 
fellow altogether, instead of the self-same 
sapling that he himself once was ; but, 
though the identity is confusing, he can 
remember the boy well, and all his queer 
fancies, amusements, and chums. 

A moderately studious boy he was, fond 
of reading stories, especially " The Arabian 
Nights ; " fond of whispering, and whittling, 
as his desk showed ; a little mischievous ; 
sound in mind and in body, but more than 
usually imaginative. " No Roman sooth- 
sayer," he says in one of his books, " ever 
had such a catalogue of omens as I found 
in the sibylline leaves of my childhood. 
That trick of throwing a stone at a tree. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 5 

and attaching some mighty issue to hitting 
or missing, which you will find mentioned 
in one or more biographies, I well remem- 
ber. Stepping on or over certain par- 
ticular things, — Dr. Johnson's especial 
weakness, — I got the habit of at a very 
early age. 

" With these follies mingled sweet delu- 
sions, which I loved so well I would not 
outgrow them, even when it required a 
voluntary effort to put a momentary trust 
in them. Here is one I cannot help telling 
you : — 

" The firing of the great guns at the 
Navy- Yard is easily heard at the place 
where I was born and lived. ' There is a 
ship of war come in,' they used to say when 
they heard them. Of course, I supposed 
that such vessels came in unexpectedly, 
after indefinite years of absence, — sud- 
denly as fallen stones, — and that the 
great guns roared in their astonishment 
and delight at the sight of the old war- 
ship splitting the bay with her cut-water. 
Now, the sloop-of-war the ' Wasp,' Capt. 
Blakely, after gloriously capturing the 



6 BOYHOOD OF J'AMOL'S AUTHORS. 

' Reindeer ' and the ' Avon,' had disap- 
peared from the face of the ocean, and was 
supposed to be lost. But there was no 
proof of it, and of course, for a time, hopes 
were entertained that she might be heard 
from. Long- after the last chance had 
utterly vanished, I pleased myself with 
the fond illusion that somewhere on the 
waste of waters she was still floating ; and 
there were years during which I never 
heard the sound of the great guns boom- 
ing inland from the Navy- Yard without 
saying to myself, 'The " Wasp " has come! ' 
and almost thinking I could see her, as she 
rolled in, crumpling the water before her, 
weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered 
spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by 
the shouts and tears of thousands. 

" This was one of the dreams that I 
nursed and never told. Let me make a 
clean breast of it now, and say, that so late 
as to have outgrown childhood, perhaps to 
have ofot far on to manhood, when the roar 
of the cannon has struck suddenly on ni)' 
ear, I have started with a thrill of vague 
expectation and tremulous delight, and the 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 7 

long-unspoken words have articulated them- 
selves in the mind's dumb whisper, ' The 
" Wasp " has come ! ' " 

Dr. Holmes was born on the 29th of 
August, 1809, and one of the earliest things 
he can remember is giving three cheers for 
the close of the war of 18 12. Until about 
two years ago, when it was pulled down, 
his birthplace stood on the edge of the 
college crrounds at Cambrido^e ; and the old 
" gambrel-roofed " house was one of the 
sights of the town which visitors seldom 
missed. 

" ' Gambrel ! gambrel ! ' — Let me beg 
You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, — 
First great angle above the hoof, — 
That's the gambrel : hence gambrel-roof." 

It had been the headquarters of the 
American army during the siege of Boston ; 
and when Oliver Wendell was born, it was 
the parsonage of his father, who was pastor 
of the First Church. A rambling, roomy 
old house it was, with untenanted upper 
chambers that were always locked, and a 
garret where strange noises could be heard, 



8 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

— the very place, in the imagination of a 
little boy, for ghosts and creatures from 
fairy-land. Then there was a dark store- 
room ; and peeping through the keyhole 
he could see heaps of chairs and tables, and 
he fancied that somehow they had rushed 
in there frightened, and had huddled to- 
gether and climbed upon each other's backs 
for protection. Sometimes he thought he 
could hear the swords and spurs of soldiers 
clanking in the passages ; and the floor of 
his father's study was covered with dents 
left by the butts of the muskets of the 
armed men who had used it as a council- 
chamber. 

Upstairs there was the portrait of a lady, 
with sword-thrusts through it, — marks of 
the British officers' rapiers, — and this is 
the same picture that now hangs on the 
wall of the library in Beacon Street. 

On her hand a parrot green 

Sits unmoving, and broods serene. 

Hold up the canvas full in view — 

Look, there's a rent the light shines through ! 

Dark with a century's fringe of dust, 

That was a Red-coat's rapier thrust." 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 9 

Who has not heard of that picture of 
Dorothy Ouincy, or, as she is famiharly 
called Dorothy O., the Autocrat's great- 
grandmother ? His musical verses have 
engraved it in the minds of thousands who 
never saw it, or even a reproduction of it. 

Cambridge was then a country village, 
and it was a pleasant walk through fields 
and lanes to the school in Cambridgeport, 
to which Oliver Wendell was sent when he 
was scarcely out of his infancy, — pleasant 
when he had company ; but he had more 
than his share of childish fancies, and on 
his way there was a great wooden hand — 
a glove-maker's sign — which used to 
swing and creak, and fill him with terror. 

"Oh, the dreadful hand!" he says in 
one of his essays, " always hanging there 
ready to catch up a little boy who would 
come home to supper no more, nor get to 
bed, — whose porringer would be laid away 
empty thenceforth, and his half-worn shoes 
wait until his smaller brother orrew to fit 
them ! " 

Then there were encounters with the 
" Port-chucks," — as the Cambridge boys 



lO BO]'NOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

called the boys of Cambridgeport, — and 
any new article of dress was sure to be 
criticised by these young Philistines. One 
morninof Oliver Wendell had on a new hat 
of Leghorn straw. 

" Hullo, you-sir," said a " Port-chuck," 
" yoo know th' wuz gon-to be a race to- 
morrah ? " 

" No," replied Oliver innocently. "Who's 
gon-to run, 'n' where 's 't gon-to be ?" 

" Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Williams, round 
the brim o' your hat." 

The "Port-chuck" put his tongue into 
his cheek, and Oliver saw that he had been 
trifled with. 

The school was kept by a stout old lady, 
called Dame Prentiss, who ruled the chil- 
dren with a long willow rod, which reached 
across the room. It w'as used for remind- 
ing rather than for chastising, how^ever ; 
and when one rod sf^ve out, the scholars 
had no hesitation in providing her with a 
new one, which they went into the fields 
for themselves. Now and then a ferule 
was the instrument of punishment ; and on 
one occasion, when Oliver had been caught 



OLIVER IVEXDELL HOLMES. II 

whittline his desk, the dame brought it 
down across his hand with startHng results: 
it fell into pieces as it touched his palm, 
though this was probably clue to a flaw in 
the material of the ferule rather than to the 
toughness of the boy. 

When he had outgrown petticoats, he 
went to other schools in Cambridgeport ; 
and he had among his schoolmates Alfred 
Lee, who afterwards became Bishop of 
Delaware ; Margaret Fuller ; and Richard 
Henry Dana, the author of that fascinating 
sea-story, "Two Years Before the Mast." 

So far he had always lived in the old 
home with the gambrel roof, which had 
been growino- dearer and dearer to him ; 
but at the ao-e of fifteen he entered the 
Phillips Academy at Andover, and then for 
the first time he felt the pangs of home- 
sickness. His year there was not very 
happy. 

"The clock was dreadfully slow in strik- 
ing the hour when recess began, and the 
professors looked as if they were always 
thinking of death," he said to the writer of 
this sketch not lono- ao-o. 



12 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

But he had pleasant memories of Ando- 
ver, too; and in 1878, when the academy 
was a century old, he went back and read 
a beautiful poem describing the sensations 
with which he entered it : — 



"The morning came : I reached the classic hall ; 
A clock-face eyed me staring from the wall ; 
Beneath its hands a printed line I read : — 
Youth is life's seed-time ; so the clock-face said. 
Some took its counsel, as the sequel showed — 
Sowed — their wild oats, and reaped as they had 
sowed. 

" How all comes back ! the upward slanting floor ; 
The masters' thrones that flank the central door ; 
The long outstretching alleys that divide 
The rows of desks that stand on either side ; 
The staring boys, a face to every desk, 
Bright, dull, pale, blooming, common, picturesque. 

" Grave is the Master's look ; his forehead wears 
Thick rows of wrinkles, fruits of worrying cares ; 
Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule, — 
His most of all whose kingdom is a school. 
Supreme he sits ; before the awful frown 
That bends his brows, the boldest eye goes down ; 
Not more submissive Israel heard and saw 
At Smai's foot the (iiver of the Law." 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 13 

After a year at Andover, Oliver Wendell 
entered Harvard University ; and while he 
was there, he maintained a fair rank for 
scholarship. Then he studied law for a 
year ; and after that he chose what was to 
be the occupation of his life, — the study 
and practice of medicine. 

His literary gifts were already known. 
When he was about twenty-one, the old 
frigate " Constitution," or the " Old Iron- 
sides " as she was called, lay in the Charles- 
town Navy- Yard, and the Government 
proposed to break her up. Some stirring- 
lines protesting against her destruction ap- 
peared in "The Boston Advertiser," from 
which they were copied by other news- 
papers, and then x:irculated on printed slips. 
They aroused such enthusiasm in favor of 
the old ship, that the Government con- 
sented to her preservation, and the author 
found his name on every lip : it was Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. Other verses, including 
" The Height of the Ridiculous," came from 
the same pen, which were no less popular ; 
and the young poet had encouragement 
enough to leave the laborator)^ and devote 



14 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

himself to the quill. But he remembered, 
no doubt, what a wise man once said about 
literature as a profession : it is a good 
walking-stick, but a poor crutch. He con- 
tinued to be a doctor, and rose to eminence 
as a professor in the Harvard Medical 
School ; but in his spare hours he culti- 
vated the Qf-enius which is as radiant as a 
star in his books. 



THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS. 

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

I wrote some lines once on a time, 

In wondrous merry mood, 
And thought, as usual, men would say 

They were exceeding good. 



They were so queer, so very queer, 
I laughed as I would die : 

Albeit, in the general way, 
A sober man am I. 



I called my servant, and he came : 
How kind it was of him 

To mind a slender man like me. 
He of the mighty limb ! 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 15 

"These to the printer ! " I exclaimed, 

And in my humorous way 
I added (as a trifling jest), 

" There'll be the devil to pay." 



He took the paper, and I watched, 

And saw him peep within : 
At the first line he read, his face 

Was all upon the grin. 

He read the next : the grin grew broad, 

And shot from ear to ear ; 
He read the third : a chuckling noise 

I now began to hear. 

The fourth : he broke into a roar ; 

The fifth : his waistband split ; 
The sixth : he burst five buttons off. 

And tumbled in a fit. 

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eyes 
I watched that wretched man ; 

And since, I never dare to write 
As funny as I can. 



l6 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

A GOOD many years ago now, a small 
bare -legged boy set out from his home in 
Portsmouth, N.H., for an afternoon's sport 
with a gun. He rambled along, as boys 
will, with his eyes wide open for every thing 
that came under them, as well as for the 
game that was the special object of his 
expedition ; and he had not gone far when 
he saw a chaise approaching, driven by the 
Governor of the State. 

The Governor was a very popular and 
distinguished man, who was being talked 
of for the Presidency ; and we should not 
have liked the small boy if he had not been 
a little overawed by finding himself alone 
in the presence of so august a personage. 
He was equal to the occasion, however ; 
and as the chaise reached him, he stood 
aside to let it pass, and gravely presented 
arms. The Governor at once pulled up his 



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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. ij 

horse, and looked with amusement at the 
Httle fellow standing there as serious as a 
sentry, with his gun held rigidly before him. 

"What is your name?" said the Gov- 
ernor. 

" Thomas Bailey Aldrich," replied the 
boy, with a military salute. 

He was invited into the chaise ; and . 
though he lost his shooting, what was that 
in comparison with the distinction of rid- 
ing into Portsmouth Town with Governor 
Woodbury ? 

This was forty years ago, and since then 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich has earned a place 
amone the foremost of American authors 
by a series of books, some in prose and 
some in verse, which are distinguished by 
the purity of their tone, the refinement of 
their style, and the picturesqueness of their 
invention. One oT them is called " The 
Story of a Bad Boy ; " and except that some 
of the names of persons and places are 
changed, it is so faithful a picture of the 
author's boyhood that it might be called an 
autobiography. If any one has not read 
that book, I advise him to do so at once ; 



1 8 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

and when he has finished it, he will, I think, 
be ready to thank me for introducing it to 
him. 

" Not such a very bad boy, but a pretty 
bad boy," the author says of himself. A 
pretty good boy we should call him, — a 
boy who would do nothing mean, cruel, or 
vulgar, though he was as ready for mischief 
as any of his playfellows. 

One cannot imagine a better place than 
Portsmouth for the bringing up of such a 
boy. It is a romantic old town by the sea, 
full of quaint old homesteads. It is built 
at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, and 
may be said to have been founded by Capt. 
John Smith, the famous adventurer, who, 
after slaying Turks in hand-to-hand com- 
bats, and doing all sorts of doughty deeds in 
various parts of the globe, visited the coast 
of New Hampshire in' 1612, and recom- 
mended this as the site of a future seaport. 

Time was when Portsmouth carried on a 
great trade with the West Indies, and 
threatened to eclipse both Boston and New 
York ; it turned out the best ships and the 
smartest sailors, and in the war of 18 12 it 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 19 

equipped many a daring privateer. But its 
prosperity slipped away from it ; and all the 
old wharves are now deserted, though when 
the sun shines upon them it brings out a 
vague perfume of the cargoes of rum, 
molasses, and spice, that used to be piled 
upon them. 

What boy wandering along wharves like 
these, and hearing from superannuated 
sailors of the former glories of the place, 
would not long to go to sea ? There were 
few boys in Rivermouth, as it is called in 
"The Story of a Bad Boy," who had not 
this ambition ; and early in life Aldrich 
began the study of navigation, though he 
was not destined to use his knowledge in 
picking paths across the sea by the aid of 
the sun and stars. 

The wharves were not the only stimulus 
to the spirit of romance in this old town. 
In the shady streets were historic houses 
in which Washington, Lafayette, and the 
King of the French had been entertained ; 
the ghosts of former greatness seemed to 
haunt them ; dark wainscot stood high 
against the walls ; strange carvings with 



20 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

winged heads clustered about the doors ; 
shadowy portraits of bewigged gentlemen 
and furbelowed dames, each with some 
legend attached to it, hung from the mould- 
ings ; and winding stairways led into mys- 
terious chambers under the roofs. It seems 
to me that an imaginative boy brought up 
amid such surroundings was bound to 
become either a sailor or an author, — that 
he would either yield to the fascinations of 
the wharves, and go to sea, or stay ashore 
to write the stories and the poems which 
would be sure to come into his head in 
the presence of these relics of an historic 
past. 

In one of those old houses which still 
stand in Court Street, where it is now used 
as a hospital, Aldrich was born, just forty- 
nine years ago; that is, in 1837. His 
father was a merchant and banker who had 
opened a business in New Orleans ; and 
it was the custom of his parents to keep 
the boy, who was their only child, with 
them in the South during the winter, and 
to send him back to Portsmouth for the 
summer. These visits were continued 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 21 

until he reached the age of thirteen, when 
he returned to Portsmouth to remain there 
for several years ; and it was in this old 
town that all which was most memorable 
in his boyhood occurred. 

He was a rather slender little fellow, but 
sound and vigorous, and ever ready for 
either sport or mischief. As many mis- 
haps befell him as usually fall to the lot of 
a high-spirited and adventurous boy. He 
could defend himself from imposition, and 
he was expert in the various games which 
occupied his comrades. He was not a 
prodigy in any way ; not marvellous either 
for his scholarship or his promise of future 
distinction. But he was very fond of read- 
ing, and spent many hours in a delightful 
old attic, where he found a lot of old 
books, among others being " Robinson 
Crusoe," "Baron Trenck," "Don Quixote," 
"The Arabian Nights," Defoe's "History 
of the Plague in London," and "Tristram 
Shandy." Of all these, Defoe's " History 
of the Plague " was his favorite. 

Like all attics in old New - England 
houses, this one was the receptacle of all 



22 BOYHOOD OF FAMOl/S AUTHORS. 

kinds of rulobish. " They never throw 
any thing away in New England," Aldrich 
said to me one day: " they always put it 
up in the attic." And here were cast-off 
clothing, legless chairs, crazy tables, and 
all sorts of things which time, and changes 
in fashions, had rendered useless. 

Among the rest was an old hide-covered 
trunk ; and seeing how little hair was left 
on it, Thomas Bailey thought he would 
attempt to restore it. He had seen in the 
window of a barber's shop a preparation 
which was highly recommended as a sure 
cure for baldness ; and he purchased a bot- 
tle of this, and carefully applied it to the 
trunk. Then he went up stairs from day 
to day to watch the effect, but the result 
was not satisfactory ; the trunk remained 
as bald as ever, and Thomas Bailey felt 
that he had wasted his money. 

The first school he went to was Dame 
Bagley's ; and from what he has told me 
of her, I shall always think of her as a 
character who ought to have belonged to 
one of Hawthorne's romances. She was 
a severe and angular person, who had a 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 23 

peculiar method of punishing her pupils. 
She constantly wore on the second finger 
of her right hand an uncommonly heavy 
thimble, and with this she would sharply 
rap the offender on the head. "Thomas 
Bailey, come here ! " Tap, tap, tap, tap ! 
It does not seem like a severe penalty ; 
but she brought her finger down with such 
force, that the culprit often felt that it was 
going right through him. 

The boy was not ver}- happy with Dame 
Bagley, whose school was a dreary, uncom- 
fortable place. The yard was bricked, and 
just one brick had been lifted out to allow 
a solitary cucumber-vine to spring up ; this 
was what Dame Bagley would probably 
have called " a richly- wooded landscape," 
And then the benches in the schoolroom 
were too hi^jh for his lees. His feet could 
not reach the floor, and his back would 
grow so tired that sometimes he threw 
himself backward upon the floor in sheer 
desperation. 

It was an altogether pleasant change 
when he left Dame Bagley's, and became 
enrolled as a pupil at the Temple School. 



24 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

The Temple School is constantly referred 
to in "The Story of a Bad Boy" as the 
Temple Grammar School, and nearly every 
thing which relates to the latter is true of 
the former ; so that the reader can get a 
better idea of Aldrich's bo)hood from tliat 
book than I can give him here. The mad 
pranks of the boys when he was initiated 
as a member of the Rivermouth Centi- 
pedes ; the fight on Slatter's Hill, that 
Gettysburg of snowballs ; the burning of 
the stage-coach, — all the adventures were 
described from real life. There is a won- 
derful pony in the book, and the pony is 
from real life too. According to the stor)', 
the Temple Grammar School was burned 
down one Fourth of July by a fire-cracker 
that flew in through a window. This was 
fiction at the time the book was published ; 
but five years afterward, as if to make the 
chronicle veracious in every particular, the 
school was burned in just that way. 

To my mind, one of the earliest signs 
Aldrich gave of his literary bent was his 
distaste for figures ; arithmetic staggered 
him, and he confesses that he often had 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 25 

to seek help from his school-fellows. This 
was very wTong, of course; and the only 
excuse I can think of may not be regarded 
as an excuse at all, but rather as an aggra- 
vation of the offence. In return for the 
help he received in arithmetic, he revised 
the compositions of the class, and even 
went so far as entirely to write the essays 
of the boys w^ho. though clever enough at 
figures, had no talent for literary exercises. 

Before he reached the age of twelve, he 
had written a story called " Colenzo." It 
was about pirates and buccaneers, and the 
scene was on a tropical island, which was 
supposed to lie somewhere out at sea, about 
seven miles from Portsmouth. Then he 
wrote articles for one of the local papers ; 
and to these utterances of precocious 
wisdom he signed the nom dc plume, 
" Experience." 

At sixteen, his school days came to an 
end ; and, his father having died, he was 
''sent to New York to become a clerk in his 
uncle's office. But day-books and ledgers 
had no more charm for him than element- 
ary arithmetic ; and by the time he reached 



26 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

twenty, he had broken loose from the 
counting-room, and won a recognized place 
for himself amono- the most orio-inal of 
American authors. Fourteen books now 
stand to his credit, — stories that linofer in 
the mind like memories of sunny days, and 
poems that have the polish and brilliance 
of diamonds, Portsmouth, sometimes with 
its own name, sometimes as Rivermouth, is 
revived ao^ain and ao-ain in them ; and in 
some charming verses he has celebrated 
his days on the Piscataqua, which were 
among the happiest, no doubt, that he has 
ever seen. 

PISCATAQUA RIVER. 

BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

Thou singest by the gleaming isles, 
By woods, and fields of com, — 

Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles 
Upon my birthday morn. 

But I within a city, I, 

So full of vague unrest, 
Would almost give my life to lie 

An hour upon thy breast ! 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 2/ 

To let the wlierry listless go, 

And, wrapt in dreamy joy. 
Dip, and surge idly to and fro, 

Like tlie red harbor-buoy ; 

To sit in happy indolence, 

I'o rest upon the oars, 
And catch the heavy earthy scents 

That blow from summer shores \ 

To see the rounded sun go down. 

And with its parting fires 
Light up the windows of the town. 

And burn the tapering spires ; 

And then to hear the muffled tolls 

From steeples slim and white, 
And watch, among the Isles of Shoals, 

The Beacon's orange light. 

O River ! flowing to the main 

Through woods, and fields of corn. 

Hear thou my longing and my pain. 
This sunny birthday morn ; 

And take this song which sorrow shapes 

To music like thine own. 
And sing it to the cliffs and capes 

And cra^rs where I am known ! 



28 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



JOHN TOWNS END TROWBRIDGE. 

If any one has succeeded in representing 
the average American boy in fiction, it is 
Mr. Trowbridge. The boys in some books 
we know of are so unreal that it does not 
seem possible that the author has ever 
been a boy himself; they are either milk- 
sops or juvenile Munchausens. But all of 
Mr. Trowbridge's boys give us the effect 
of having been photographed from life, 
and their actions are as natural as their 
characters. 

He does not picture them in marvellous 
exploits on the Cordilleras, or beating the 
record of Hall and Kane in the Arctic 
regions, or doing what no boys probably 
ever did, except in the imagination. They 
are shrewd, active, hard-working fellows, on 
the farm or in the country store, and their 
struggles and adventures are just of that 
kind which American boys go through 






Jf%^ C;:;7^'7T,^^yiZ^i^^ ^^^y^^tA-A-^si^C 



JOHN TOW ^YS END TROWBRIDGE. 2g 

everywhere. A good reason for this 
fidehty to nature is that Mr. Trowbridge 
himself was a typical American boy, and 
the experiences of his own youth are re- 
flected in those of his characters. 

" My hands were filled with common tasks, 
My head with rare romances," — 

he says in one of his poems. He was 
familiar in his boyhood with the labor of 
the field, the drudgery of the farm, the 
contentions of the district school, and 
those aspirations which carry a boy up 
stairs, when his day's work is done, to study 
by a rush-light or a cracked lamp in a cold 
garret. 

" Some of the Jack Hazard stories, espe- 
cially 'Jack,' 'A Chance for Himself,' and 
' Doing His Best,' contain very faithful 
descriptions of the farm life and scenes in 
which I was brought up," he said to me 
one day. " Although you will not find 
much of me personally in those stories, the 
kind of school I sometimes went to is 
exactly pictured in 'Doing His Best;' 



30 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

and ' Peach Hill Farm,' where so much of 
the action takes place, was merely a fancy 
name for my father's farm in Ogden." 

His account of his boyhood is quite as 
interesting as his stories, and I shall repeat 
it here in almost the very words he used in 
eivine it to me. 

His father was a farmer who in 1811 
emigrated from the East to the wilderness 
of Western New York, making the jour- 
ney in winter with a young wife, a little 
load of household goods, and an ox-team. 
Western New York was then a wilderness 
indeed. There was only one house where 
the city of Rochester now stands ; and 
crossing the Genesee River on the ice, the 
pioneer setded eight miles beyond, cut 
rdown the trees, built a log house, and made 
a little farm in the woods. 

In this log house a boy was born in the 
winter of 1827 ; and to him was given the 
name of John Townsend Trowbridge, John 
Townsend having been a benefactor of the 
father. He was not the first born, but 
the eighth of nine children, and it is easy 
to understand that there was no silver 



JOHN TOWNS END TROWBRIDGE. 31 

spoon for him. He lived the ordinary Hfe 
of farm boys in that region, and went to 
school six or seven months of the year 
until he was about fourteen, after which 
time he went only during the winter term, 
and worked on the farm all summer. 

Neither silver spoons, nor any other 
luxuries, were there. But his mother was 
a woman of a refined and devotional 
nature ; and despite the load of care, his 
father was a cheerful man, a good musician, 
and a capital story-teller, who, when his 
stock of bear and panther stories had been 
exhausted, would sometimes amuse his 
children by talking to them in rhyme. 
There were books in the house, too ; and 
in reading them the boy escaped the 
poverty of his surroundings, and was borne 
in imagination into the wonderland of the 
poets and romancers. 

" I took up the study of French by my- 
self under peculiar disadvantages, having 
none of the books which now render the 
acquisition of that language so easy ; and 
learned to read and translate it in the 
chimney-corner, before I ever saw a person 



32 BOVJIOOD OF FAMOUS AUTIIOKS. 

who was at all conversant with it." he tells 
us. Then he learned German and Latin in 
the same way and under the same dis- 
ad\'antaoes. 

A hoy who had spirit enough for this 
was siu\^ to have ambitions ; and as he read 
Scott, Byron, and IMoore, he had an inex- 
tlng-uishable desire to write. Though he 
was vigorous, and fond of out-door sports, 
he was shy antl reticent, and he never 
whispered his dreams even to his most inti- 
mate friend. But w^hile he followed the 
plough he planned romances and com- 
posed verses, and at the end of the day 
stole into some quiet place and wrote 
them out. 

This was the period in which he made 
his acquaintance with IMoore's poem 
" Lalla Rookh ; " and he has described it 
in some verses, from which we have already 
quoted a line or two. 

" jNIy hands wore filled with common tasks, 
My head with rare romances ; 
My old straw hat was bursting out 
With liiiht locks and bright tancies. 



JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. 33 

" In field or wood, my thoughts threw off 
The old jjrosaic trammels : 
The sheep were grazing antelopes, 
The cows, a train of camels. 

" Under the shady apple- boughs. 
The book was my companion ; 
And while I read, the orchard spread 
One mighty branching banyan. 

" To mango-trees or almond groves, 

Were changed the plums and quinces ; 
/was the poet Feramorz, 

And had, of course, my Princess. 

" The well-curb was her canopied 
Rich palanquin ; at twilight, 
'Twas her pavilion overhead. 
And not my garret skylight. 

" Ah, Lalla Rookh ! O charmed book ! 
First love, in manhood slighted ; 
To-day we rarely turn the page 
In which our youth delighted." 

When he was sixteen years old his father 
died ; and a year later he went to Illinois, 
where he had a sister living in DuPage 
County. The following winter he taught a 
school in the neighborhood ; and then he 



34 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

tried farming, though he had no taste for it. 
He spent more time in shooting grouse 
and hunting deer than in looking after his 
land ; and his crop was a failure, though not 
through any fault of his. His heart was 
set on authorship, and nothing else would 
satisfy him. Essays and poems were de- 
spatched now and then to country papers, 
and he tasted the never-to-be-forgotten 
ecstasy of seeing his name in print. 

The eeneral who has been victorious in 
battle, the astronomer who has found a new 
star, the explorer who leaps upon a shore 
which his feet are the first to touch, and 
even the poet himself when laurels are 
thick upon him, does not feel the exulta- 
tion which throbs in the boy who sees his 
earliest song in print, and stands trembling 
at the portals of the temple which enshrines 
those who have enriched the world with 
good books. It is only a mirage, perhaps ; 
but though it fades and leaves him far away 
from that glorious company, for the mo- 
ment it dazzles his sight. 

A few bits of prose and verse in the 
columns of a country paper, for which he 



JOHN TOWNS END TROW BRIDGE. 35 

received no pay, were followed by " A New 
Year's Address," written for the carriers of 
the " Niagara Courier ; " and this was the 
first literary work which brought him money. 
The amount was one dollar and a half, not 
a larg-e sum, to be sure, but it convinced 
him that literature was his proper vocation ; 
and he set out for New- York City to earn 
a living by his pen. 

Even now, when publishers pay twenty 
times as much as they did then, an un- 
known lad coming to the city with such a 
purpose would have the hardest kind of 
a struesfle. The chances are ten to one, 
that after a period of semi-starvation and 
repeated disappointments, he would have 
to give up, and seek his bread in some 
other employment. In Trowbridge's youth 
the circumstances were still harder, but his 
ambition was justified and fortified by a 
natural gift which was bound to find recog- 
nition. He had to climb the editorial stairs 
very often, and to go down them with a 
heavy heart, — a heart so heavy that if the 
rejected manuscript had been lead, it could 
not have made it heavier, — before success 



36 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

came to him. Once he had to drop the 
pen ahogether, and to work at engraving 
gold pencil-cases in Jersey City, an employ- 
ment which, if less cono-enial, was much 
more certain in its rewards than literature. 

" I was more than once reduced to my 
last loaf," he says in a fragment of auto- 
biography which he intrusted to me. " I 
lodged at that time in a house on Broad- 
way, nearly opposite the Cafe des Mille 
Colonnes, where a band used to come out 
upon a balcony in the summer evenings 
and play tunes which to this day I can 
never hear without being instantly trans- 
ported back to my garret and my crust. I 
do not remember, however, that I once 
lost hope in the darkest of these dark 
hours." 

When looking about for employment 
in New York, he took- some verses to Major 
Noah, the editor of "The Sunday Times," 
who treated him with great kindness, and 
counselled him to make literature his pro- 
fession, but to write prose instead of poetry. 
Major Noah introduced him to some pub- 
lishers, and to the editor of "The Dollar 



JOH.Y TOIVNSEND TROWBRIDGE. 37 

Magazine," which was so called because it 
was sent to subscribers for a dollar a year, 
though it earned a still further claim to the 
title by paying writers one dollar a page 
for their contributions. One of the stories 
which "The Dollar Magazine" accepted was 
copied into a popular London magazine, 
and into many publications in the United 
States ; and Trowbridge thought that his 
fortune was made. But he found it im- 
possible to live by writing for one dollar a 
page ; and fancying that he had taken a step 
higher by sending to " The Knickerbocker 
Magazine " an article which was speedily 
published in its pages, he learned from the 
polite editor, with deep disappointment, 
that that highly respectable periodical never 
paid any thing at all for contributions from 
new writers. 

Fame, which had been hovering over the 
garret in an uncertain way for some time, 
at last knocked at the door, however ; and 
the farm - boy became the distinguished 
author. 

Mr. Trowbridofe now lives about five 
miles from Boston, in the pleasant suburb 



38 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

of Arling-ton, where he has a pleasant home 
on the banks of the historic Spy Pond. He 
takes high rank as a poet and as a novehst, 
but his chief distinction has been won in 
the field of juvenile literature. 



9..SydneyPlace., 
Bath. 

^U 7L. f^e^Ju^ ny/uJW^Q c^i^<e<^J. <n*6y< 
<^-wk-e ywvvv "i^t. Is-*^t< C4 yyyu.c4^ Ucl^v^ 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 39 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 

I OFTEN hear it said that boys are not 
as crazy to go to sea as they used to be ; 
that the charm of a sailor's Hfe has been 
dispelled ; that steamers making regular 
voyages from port to port, like ferry-boats, 
do not allow the imagination to play as it 
did when a voyage could be made only in a 
sailing ship, and when there were no ocean 
cables to keep us informed of arrivals and 
departures all over the world. 

Imagination, of course, must have always 
had a g-ood deal to do with the fascination 
of the sea ; for a sailor's life has been rec- 
ognized as a hard one in every period, and 
under all flags. But in the days of bucca- 
neers and pirates, and when ships set forth 
on voyages to countries of which little or 
nothing- was known, it was easier to lose 
sight of the privations to be endured than 
it is nov/ when every land has been ex- 



40 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

plorcd, and the traffic of the hig-h seas has 
no more romance in it than a raihvay. 

If the boys who think of goinq- to sea 
are fewer than they were, however, the 
interest in nautical stories has not abated. 
Capt. Marryat has lost none of his charm, 
and a new writer of sea-stories has come 
lip, whose works are said to be more popu- 
lar in America than those of any other 
English novelist. 

This is William Clark Russell, the author 
of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," "A 
Sailor's Sweetheart," "The Lady Maud," 
and several other books with which the 
readers of these lines are probably ac- 
quainted. I have no doubt that the reason 
his books are liked so much is that they are 
full of realities, and that he has been a sailor 
himself, and knows whereof he writes. 

Althouoh an Eno-Hshman, he was born 
at the Carlton House, Broadway, New 
York, on the 24th of February, 1844. His 
father was a composer and singer ; and it 
was natural that the son of the author of 
that cheery song, " A Life on the Ocean 
Wave," should make the sea his theme 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 41 

when the time came for him to use a pen. 
He also inherited some of his hterary tastes 
from his mother, who in her youth was 
intimately associated with Charles Lamb, 
De Ouincey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, 
her father having been a brother of Charles 
Lloyd the poet. But it was not until he 
had been through many adventures, and 
had tried his hand at other things, that he 
became an author. 

Returning to Europe, his father went to 
live at Boulogne, France, in a house named 
Chateau Lettsom, after the celebrated Dr. 
Lettsom, who had once occupied it ; and 
here Clark Russell's early years were passed. 
He went to a private school in the town, 
and he found among his fellow-scholars 
three sons of Charles Dickens, — Frank, 
Alfred, and Sydney. Frank became his 
chum ; they read the same stories, dreamed 
the same dreams, and by and by, when 
both were about eleven years of age, they 
conspired to run away from school and 
enter upon an expedition which was bound 
to make their fortunes. The purpose of 
the expedition was to shoot eider-ducks in 



..p lUIVlKH)!) OF I-AMOUS AUTHORS. 

Norway, of whicli thc^y luul rccul in some 
hooks of inivcl ; and Lhc-y calculated that 
the wealth of "Monte Cristo " would be 
exceeded hy their profits from the sale 
of the feathers. lUit T'rank Dickens was 
called home before their plans were ma- 
tured ; and his companion was doomed to 
remain at school two years more, at the 
(;nd of which his jjarents decided that his 
wish to o() to sea should be g-ratified. 

Those who have read " My Watch Be- 
low " and '-'The Voyage to the Cape" will 
call to mind that in the former there is 
a story, "The Middle's Yarn," and in the 
latter a chapter called "It Acted Like a 
Charm." Both of these fraonients are 
autobiooTa[)hical, and if I want(;d to deter 
a boy from going to sea I would not fail to 
place them in his hands, 

A berth as a midshipman was found for 
Clark Russell in one of Duncan Dunbar's 
merchant ships, and the little fellow (only 
thirteen and a half years old) was sent 
tlown to the f^asL India Docks in London 
to join her. It was a day of dreams and 
exultation for him. no doubt; he pictured 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 43 

himself as another " Robinson Crusoe ; " 
and he swelled with self-importance when, 
after struggling along the crowded wharves 
and dodging in and out among the piles 
of merchandise, he passed the gangway, 
and stood upon the deck of his ship {Jiis 
ship !) with the masts and spars and rig- 
ging criss-crossing the sky high above 
him. 

When a boy wants to go to sea in Amer- 
ica, he must get an appointment to the 
Naval Academy at Annapolis, if he wishes 
to enter the United-States service on a 
higher grade than that of the common 
sailor ; and if he is content with the mer- 
chant-service, the only thing he can do is 
to ship as a foremast hand, and subject him- 
self to all the miseries of life in the fore- 
castle. On many English ships, however, 
it is the custom to take midshipmen ; and 
in view of the fact that they are berthed 
apart from the crew, they or their parents 
are required to pay a good round sum to 
the owners. This is what was done in the 
case of Clark Russell ; but he found, as 
many boys had done before and have done 



44 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

since, that the amount paid as a " premium," 
as it is called, was money thrown away, and 
that the lot of a midshipman in the mer- 
chant-service is every bit as rough as that 
of poor Jack Tar in the forecastle. He had 
not been on board many hours before he 
regretted the choice he had made, and the 
life of an adventurous mariner seemed very 
much less attractive than it had done in 
the story-books. 

The space allotted to the midshipmen 
was " 'tween decks," a dark, narrow bit of 
a room, with a table on stanchions running 
down it ; and when Clark Russell stumbled 
into it, those who were to be his mess- 
mates were already there, skylarking, smok- 
inor and stowino- their mattresses in their 
bunks. 

" Youngster," cried one of them, recog- 
nizing him as soon as he entered, "why 
don't you go down on all fours, and wag 
your tail ? Don't you know you're a dog ? 
You must be a dog, or you wouldn't go to 
sea. The sea's only a fit life for dogs." 

" Stop till he's slung aloft to scrape 
down the mizzen-royal-mast in a gale of 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 45 

wind," said anodier ; "then he'll find out 
why he's come to sea. — D'ye know where 
the mizzen-royal-mast is kept stowed ? 
Go and ask the skipper to light you down 
into the lazarette, where you'll find the 
butcher's mate shelling pease. He has 
charge of the mizzen-mast, and is the only 
man allowed to serve out new dead-eyes 
when the ship's figure-head goes adrift and 
stops the fellow at the wheel from obeying 
orders." 

The boy could not understand this 
" chafi," but it was more endurable than 
the rough usage which followed. 

The first night at sea, a storm arose ; and 
as the green-hand lay deadly sick in his 
bunk, he did not expect that he would have 
to get up when all hands were called to 
reef topsails. But, sick as he was, he was 
dragged on to his feet, and sent aloft. It 
was pitch dark, the rain driving along as if 
it meant to blind a man, and the wind 
blowing a gale ; but he knew it would not 
do to skulk, and he staggered up the 
companion-way, and began to haul on a 
rope. Seeing him doing this, the third 



4<^) liovnoon oi' i-\imous auiiiors. 

m 

mate roared out his name, and ordered 
him to lay alt and jump alolt and hc-lp the 
other midshipmen to reei the mizzen- 
topsail. 

The mizzen-topsall ag^ain ! How hate- 
ful it souncUxl ! " All three tojjsail 
halyards vv(ire loose," he tells us in " The 
Middie's Yarn," and " the canvas was 
hani^ino" in the darkness like <rrcat g-uns 
going- off, all {\u\ crew, and idlers as well, 
singing out at the ropes, and the second 
mate in the waist and the chief mate aft 
shouting at the top of tlu'ir voices." 

1 le got inl{> the lee shrouds, and climbed 
up until he came to the mizzen-top ; but 
once there he was too dizzy and too weak 
to go higher. lie sat down dreadfully 
sick, and wished himstdf ck^ad. llis cap 
was l)lown off his head, his boots were full 
of water, and, as he had no oilskins on, he 
was soaked to the skin by the; rain and the 
spra)'. 1 1 ere the sailors found him, and 
one of them, taking i)it)' on him, shoved 
him through the " lubber's hole," and 
helped him down on d(.:ck again. 

This was only the beginning; and when 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 47 

he came to have as little fear of going 
aloft as the best of them, he still had to 
put up with poor and insufficient food, and 
with all kinds of drudgery. 

" I've scraped and greased down masts," 
he says, " painted the ship's side, tarred 
down, cleaned the brass-work, painted the 
quarter-boats ; and I only wonder that 
the skipper didn't put us to washing 
up the cuddy-dishes and cleaning the 
knives." 

Taking his own word for it that "The 
Middle's Yarn " is autobiographical, we 
find another passage in that sketch which 
shows us how much he endured on his 
first voyage : — 

" I was in the chief mate's watch, — the 
port watch, it's called. Well, suppose we 
have the middle watch in ; at four o'clock 
we're turned out and come on deck. It's 
still dark, and there's nothing to be done 
if the wind's steady and the ship is holding 
her course. But soon after the sun rises 
the pumps are rigged, and the watch turns 
to and washes the decks down. If it's 
fine warm weather, I pull off my boots ; if 



43 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

not, I keep them on — sea-boots, of course. 
The midshipmen have to scrub the poop 
clown ; they lay hold of the brushes, and 
the third mate swills the water alonor. 
That was our way ; but, of course, cus- 
toms are difterent in different ships. We 
scrub under the hencoops, scrub the grat- 
ings abaft the wheel, clean the paint-work, 
and when that housemaid's iob is over we 
swab and coil down and make the poop 
fit for the passengers to enjoy themselves 
upon. By the time all this is done, the 
brass-work cleaned, and so forth, it's past 
seven bells, and we go below to breakfast. 
I've already described our cabin, but you 
could never understand it without seeing 
a drawing of it. I once killed twenty- 
eight cockroaches in my bunk in twelve 
minutes. It wasn't only that our cabin 
was dark, and lumbered up with table and 
bunks, and our ' stores ' stowed away in a 
corner alongside a dresser full of plates 
and dishes : we had a heap of emigrants 
in the 'tween decks ; and what with the 
womens quabbling, and the children squall- 
ing, and the men growling, the row al: 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 49 

day long was like an Irish riot. I say 
nothinof of the different smells of the food 
and the washing-tubs. Well, we'd go be- 
low to breakfast ; but what was there to 
eat ? Biscuit, with a bit of yesterday's 
pork or beef, — but seldom that, for, bad 
as the food was, we youngsters were never 
so well supplied with salt meat but that 
we weren't always ready to eat each other's 
allowance, — and some black liquor called 
tea, with a mass of short yellow sticks float- 
ing atop of it. When I used to look at 
that food, how my conscience would prick 
me for having turned up my nose at the 
dinners on my father's table, saying, as I 
used to, to my mother, ' Mutton again — 
it's always mutton ! ' Or, ' Apple-tart ! 
Why don't you give us plum-pudding for 
a change ? ' I'd have put up with mutton 
and apple-tart every day at sea, for months 
at a stretch, could I've got 'em. After 
breakfast the starboard watch would go on 
deck, and we of the port watch .would turn 
in. At a quarter before 't\v^lvew^< rouse 
out to get dinner. This consisted of pork 
or beef. If it was pork day, we'd have 



so BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

some lukewarm, greasy water with a few 
dozen of yellow shot knocking about in it, 
called pea-soup, served out to us ; if beef 
day, we'd get a calker of duff, looking to 
the eye like old yellow soap, and tasting — 
well, and tasting like duff; and more than 
that I can't say. Sometimes we'd have a 
few of our own preserved spuds — spuds 
means potatoes — cooked ; but I could 
never endure the smell, much less the 
taste, of those things. Then we'd go on 
deck, where we'd be set to work at once 
on different jobs." 

One voyage of this kind would cure any 
boy who had only a fancy for the sea, and 
send him home penitent ; but Clark Russell 
had a deep love of blue water, and though 
he found that a sailor's life was not just 
what he had pictured it to be, there were 
charms in it that induced him to remain 
in the service of Duncan Dunbar. From 
midshipman he rose to be mate ; and 
he made voyages to Australia, Madras, 
Calcutta, Hong Kong, and other places. 
On one occasion he lay for ten months 
in the Gulf of Pe-Chee-Lee, his ship 



WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL. 51 

being a transport carrying troops from 
Calcutta. 

Wliile he was still a very young man, 
however, he gave up the sea as a calling; 
and after two months spent in a stock- 
broker's office, he took up the pen, and 
entered on a literary career. Did he find 
this much easier than the sea ? Not in the 
beginning. He sent a novel to an eminent 
firm of publishers ; and after eight months 
of weary waiting, his manuscript was re- 
turned to him, " in a basket, like a leg of 
mutton," as he says. Other attempts were 
more successful, but the novel by which he 
afterward made his mark was rejected by 
at least one publisher before it was ac- 
cepted. This was " The Wreck of the 
Grosvenor." Since that he has gone on 
writing sea stories, and it is his own expe- 
riences that give them life and interest. 



52 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

One of the chief uses of biography is 
in the power it has to cheer up those 
whose hves are beset with difficukies, and 
to awaken aspiration where hope has 
scarcely dared to sit. Many a boy has 
learned from the printed page the lesson 
that Bow bells ranof out to Dick Whit- 
tington, and has found his courage re- 
newed for fresh endeavor by the example 
set forth in the narrative of some life in 
which a greater adversity than his own has 
been doggedly resisted and overcome. 
Turninof over the leaves of the book, he has 
seen the black letters of despair vanish, and 
all earthly attainments made possible to the 
youth who has patience and industry. 

Such a lesson as this, not a new one, to 
be sure, is brought home to us once more 
when we look at the boyhood of Edward 
Eggleston, whose stories, among which are 



"^T Un^ tiui. Hcro6f^yu ^CLkcriytCrtn^ , 



[JIM dZiA<cu ly) tuzA. 'to a^^c/iJxjuv f Oa^cL, 

CA.VtO'C^^^y^ ^ ^^"t (Xu^U- LiZcCt tt> LyRX^^ Ciut>(_ 



. EDWARD EGGLP:ST0N. 53 

"The Hoosier Schoolmaster," "The Mys- 
tery of iMetropohsville," and "The End of 
the World," have placed him among the 
most successful and most original writers 
of fiction in America, while he has added 
to the distinction thus acquired by his 
work as an editor, an historian, and a poet. 

He was born on the loth of December, 
1837, at Vevay, Indiana, — a country boy 
who had to contend not only with the dis- 
advantages which loom up before every 
country boy who wants to lead an intel- 
lectual life, but also with frequent illnesses 
which came and paralyzed the hand when 
the lamp of ambition burned the brightest, 
and showed Fame in her most alluring 
garb. 

A country boy is at a certain disadvan- 
tage in the matter of education now, but his 
opportunities are incalculably greater than 
what they were in the days of Edward 
Eggleston's boyhood. Then the rule of 
three was the objective point of all study, 
and it was thought that he who had ci- 
phered through that had well- nigh ex- 
hausted human knowledge. The school- 



54 JhUW/ih)/) OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

master himself was often unable to spell 
the simplest words. 

"The teaching was absurd," Mr. Eggles- 
ton says in one of his sketches. " I was 
made to go through Webster's spelling- 
book five times before I was thought fit to 
begin to read, and my mother, twenty years 
earlier, spelled it through nine times before 
she was allowed to begin Lindley Murray's 
' English Reader.' As I recall the old- 
time school, I cannot but think that if its 
discipline was somewhat more brutal than 
the school discipline of to-day, its course 
of study was far less so. To a nervous 
child the old discipline was, indeed, very 
terrible. The long birch switches hanging 
on hooks aoainst the wall haunted me nioht 
and day from the time I entered one of the 
old schools. And whencn-er there came 
an outburst between master and pupils, the 
thoucrhtless child often cfot the beatine that 
should have fallen upon the malicious mis- 
chief-makers. As the master was alwa)s 
quick to fly into a passion, the fun-loving 
boys were always happy to stir him up. It 
was an exciting sport, like bull-baiting, or 



EDWARD EGGLESTOX. 55 

like poking sticks through a fence at a 
cross doof. Sometimes the ferocious mas- 
ter showed an abiHty on his own part to get 
some fun out of the conflict, as when on 
one occasion in a school in Ohio the boys 
were forbidden to attend a circus. Five 
or six of them went in spite of the prohibi- 
tion. The next morninof the schoolmaster 
called them out on the floor, and addressed 
them : — 

" ' So you went to the circus, did you ? ' 

" ' Yes, sir.' 

'"Well, the others did not get a chance 
to see the circus. I want you boys to show 
them what it looked like, and how the 
horses galloped around the ring. You will 
join your hands in a circle about the stove. 
Now start ! ' 

" With that he began whipping them as 
they trotted around and around the stove." 

But, few as the opportunities were, there 
never was a time in Indiana when a o-ood 

o 

school was not accounted a thing of the 
greatest value, and Mr. Eggleston tells a 
story of a raw-boned boy who knocked at 
the schoolmaster's door early one winter's 



56 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

morning' to ask how he should do a " sum " 
which puzzled him. He had ridden a farm- 
horse many miles for this purpose, and had 
to be back home in time to begin his day's 
work as usual. The kind-hearted school- 
master, chafing his hands to keep them 
warm, sat down by the boy, and taught 
him how to do the " sum." Then the poor 
little fellow straightened himself up, and, 
thrusting his hand into his trousers pocket, 
pulled out a quarter of a dollar, explaining 
with a blush that it was all he could pay, 
for it was all he had. Of course the master 
made him put it back, and told him to come 
whenever he wanted any help. 

The father of Edward Eggleston was a 
Virginian, a graduate of William and TVlary 
College, who went to Indiana in early man- 
hood, and achieved a place among the 
foremost men at the bar in the West. He 
died when he was a little more than thirty 
years of age, but he had already spent no 
little time in moulding the character of Ed- 
ward, who was his oldest child. One day 
he said to him, — 

" I'll tell you what my father told me, and 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 57 

his father told him, — never tell a lie, and 
knock down any man that says you do." 

The Eesflestons were Southerners, and 
had always lived up to this family pre- 
cept ; but Edward omitted the knocking 
down part. On another occasion, when his 
father was a candidate for Congress, he 
said to the son, — 

" I'm not going to live very long. Never 
do you have any thing to do with politics. 
In politics a man is as much disgusted 
with the rascality of his friends as of his 
enemies." 

It was not an eventful boyhood, this of 
Edward Eggleston. Part of it was spent 
in farm labor, and part in a country store. 
All his school days did not cover more than 
two years, and he may claim to be self- 
educated. Until he was ten years old he 
had the reputation of being dull despite 
his shrewdness, but after that he never had 
a schoolmate who could acquire knowledge 
more rapidly. He got more out of his 
habit of readinor than out of his attendance 
at school, and he learned several languages 
by solitary study. 



58 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

" Of the books that impressed me deeply 
when I was a boy," he says in a letter to 
the author of this sketch, " I remember 
particularly Franklin's autobiograph)^ cer- 
tain essays of Bishop Thomson, Young's 
' Night-Thoughts,' and Pope's poetry, espe- 
cially the ' Essay on Man.' When I was 
a little less than sixteen I was strongly im- 
pressed by Priestley's ' Exposition of the 
Hartleian System of Mental Philosophy,' 
and by Locke on the ' Conduct of the 
Human Understanding.' At sixteen I read 
with keen relish, but without entire agree- 
ment, certain of Lord Jeffrey's essays. I 
read few novels, for I was brought up a 
Methodist. I remember the delight I had 
at seventeen in Milton's ' Paradise Lost,' 
Irving's ' Sketch Book,' and Virgil's Ec- 
logues, which last I read in the original 
alone. I was throughout my childhood 
and youth strongly influenced by Method- 
ist literature, of which I read much, for my 
life was double. I was almost an enthu- 
siast on one side, and a lad with a strong 
bent toward literature and learning on the 
other." 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 59 

Ambitious as he was to be a scholar, 
there were weeks and months when he 
could not study, owing to illness, and the 
enforced idleness was a sore trial to him. 
Every road seemed barred to him by his ill 
health and uncertain tenure of life. There 
were times, however, when he was strong 
enough to take long walks with his brother, 
George Gary Eggleston, who has also be- 
come a notable author. They spent days 
together tramping over the hills and revel- 
ling in the beauties of the landscape spread 
out before them from the summits. They 
followed a plan of Edward's devising to 
economize strength, and secure the best re- 
sults of exertion. He had observed that 
lonor rests stiffen the muscles, and he there^ 
fore determined that they should walk 
steadily for ten minutes, and then rest for 
three. This they did frequently for an 
entire day, from sunrise to sunset, without 
apparent hurt even to him; and to harden 
themselves still more, as they thought, they 
gave up their beds, and slept on the floor of 
their room. Edward made their walks still 
more interesting by his knowledge of geol- 



6o BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

oj4y, and gave the history of trilobitcs 
which George knocked out of perilous 
places in the face of the cliffs. Naturally 
Edward was too great an invalid for many 
of the sports of his playfellows. He was 
only a middling ball player, but he was a 
first-rate hand at king's base, which re- 
quires the fleetness of foot which he pos- 
sessed in a remarkable degree, and in 
" bull-pen " — an old Middle State game, — 
he was the best dodger of them all. 

" In all intellectual ways," says one of 
his old schoolfellows, " he was the recog- 
nized captain of every school he ever at- 
tended. Curiously enough he maintained 
another sort of ascendency less easily ac- 
counted for. We were a robust set of fel- 
lows, rough in sport and energetic in all 
physical ways, and usually we had pity 
rather than sympathy or respect for physi- 
cal weakness ; but Edward always com- 
manded the school on the playground as 
well as elsewhere. His word was as nearly 
law with us as any thing could be among a 
rather lawless set of youngsters. He was 
never thought of as a weakling at all ; he 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 6 1 

asked no odds of anybody on account of 
his illness, and he took all his knocks as 
manfully as the most robust of us. But 
the peculiar regard in which he was held 
by his companions, and the undisputed 
command he exercised upon occasions, 
were due in a large part to two facts : first, 
that we all recognized him as our superior 
in knowledge and ability; and, secondly, 
that we knew him to be just in all his judg- 
ments and absolutely without fear or favor." 

When he was about seventeen years old, 
he went in quest of health among his fa- 
ther's relatives in Virginia, and for five 
months he attended a boarding-school in 
Amelia County. This was the last school- 
ing he ever had. His health continued 
poor, and in 1856, two years later, he went 
to Minnesota, where he became a jack-of- 
all-trades. He made himself useful on a 
farm, he joined the chain-gang of a sur- 
veying party, and he opened a photograph- 
gallery. 

Then he returned to his native State, 
and, having always had a deep religious 
feeling, he started out as a circuit preacher. 



62 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

travelling- from town to town with the Gos- 
pel in his saddle-bags. From hut to hut, 
we ought to say, rather than from town to 
town, for the path of the circuit preacher 
lay through the wilderness to places in 
which there were no regular churches. 

All this time, however, he was gathering 
materials for the stories that were afterward 
to make him famous. As many others 
have done, he made his entrance into the 
profession of literature through journal- 
ism, which is a sort of half-sister to it ; and 
he w^as successively connected with "The 
Little Corporal " (then an excellent maga- 
zine for young people), "The Independent" 
and "Hearth and Home," a once popular 
weekly. It was while he was editor of the 
latter that he wrote "The Hoosier School- 
master," which a distinguished critic has 
said is as faithful a picture of life m South- 
ern Indiana forty years ago as Sir Walter 
Scott's " Ivanhoe " is of life in Eno-land 
after the Norman conquest. Its success 
was extraordinary from the appearance of 
the first instalnient ; and, when it afterward 
came out in book form, it rivalled in pop- 



EDJVARD ECCLESrON. 6^ 

iilarlty " Uncle Tom's Cabin " and " Little 
Women." Even now, after fifteen years, it 
sells better than most new works ; and the 
reason is, that it is true to life. It has 
been followed by half a dozen other sto- 
ries, among Avhich are " Roxy " and "The 
Hoosier Schoolboy." We are probably not 
violating- a confidence in repeating what the 
author has said to us : "I have drawn my 
native village — Vevay, Indiana — in ' Roxy' 
and in ' The Hoosier Schoolboy ; ' and my 
stories are full of the reflections of my child- 
hood, but of undiluted autobiography there 
is little." 



64 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 

As the dusk was setting in on a beauti- 
ful autumnal day about thirty-seven )-ears 
ago, a man and a boy were driving a cow 
along a country road in Ohio. They had 
come a long distance, and were wear)' ; but 
though the boy limped, the conversation 
did not flag as they trudged along ; and 
you might have seen that while they 
talked with such animation, they were ali\-e 
to the gold and crimson of the autumn 
woods, which seemed to have borrowed 
their flashes of color from the sunset sky. 

They were evidently not farmers ; both 
had the appearance of living a city life, but 
had they been observed, the things they 
were saying, and not their looks, would 
have attracted attention ; for they were 
talking of Cervantes and Shakspeare. 

The cow needed much urging, and it 
was late at night when they reached some 



yM~- ^/- ^/ ^ //d 




O^.^ /^^^^'L^^ f,t^r-r^c^ ^^.^.^/_ ^ 



^y*^y- /7'*^-«»-X^ ^LA-^r^/^ <6-©v"-»^"*** a^-*-*^ 

/ 



IVILL/AM DEAN HO WELLS. 



65 



white-limbed sycamores beside die tail-race 
of a grist-mill on the Little Miami River, 
on the other side of which was the small 
log cabin in which they lived. A question 
then arose as to how they should get the 
cow across. They did not know the depth 
of the water, but they knew it to be cold, 
and they did not care to swim it. The 
elder wanted the boy to run up under the 
sycamores to the saw-mill, cross the head- 
race there, and come back to receive the 
cow on the other side of the tail-race. But 
with all his literature, the boy was young 
enough to be superstitious, and afraid of 
the dark ; and though the elder urged him 
to go, he would not force him. They could 
see the lights in the cabin twinkling cheer- 
fully, and they shouted to those within, but 
no one heard them. They called and 
called in vain, and were answered only by 
the cold rush of the tail-race, the rustle of 
s)'camore leaves, and the homesick lowing 
of the cow. 

They determined to drive her across 
from the shore, and then to run up to the 
saw-mill and down the other bank, so as to 



66 no \ noon on jamous AurnoRs. 

catch her as slu" rcaclu'd it, \Vh(;n tlicy 
came ihcrc, she was not to Ix; lound, liow- 
cvcr; she had inslaiUl)' turned aL^ain, and 
(hn'ino the ni^ht she niatlc licr way l)ack 
to the town from which they had brought 

h.T. 

The 1()<;' cabin was a small one, with a 
cornfield of eighty acres bt:hind it, and it 
was nearly a cjuarter of a century old. The 
boy who entenxl it after this adventure was 
William Dean 1 lowells, and thi; man was 
his father, who had recently brought his 
family from Dayton to take charge of the 
saw-mill antl grist-mill on the river. Th(i 
incident illustrates, with what follows, the 
simplicity of the early life of one who has 
since become- one of the foremost Anu^-ican 
novelists. 

Mr. Howells was born March i, 1837, ^'^^ 
Martin's b\'rr)\ Ohio, oi)i)osite Wheeling, 
West Virginia. Mis father was of WVlsh 
descent, his mother of German stock, and 
both were superior by education and tastes 
to tlu- moderate circumstances in which 
they found themselvc^s when this bo)', who 
was one of eiLiht children, came: into the 



IVILIJAM DEAN IIOWELLS. 6y 

world. When he was only three years old, 
they left Martin's Ferry to live in Mamil- 
ton, Ohio, and there the father bought and 
edited the " Intelligencer," a weekly news- 
paper, and his son was scarcely out of his 
cradle before he learned to set type. He 
had little regular schooling, but he was a 
great reader, and had a natural gift for 
composition. He does not remember how 
young he was when he mastered the mys- 
teries of the printer's trade, but it* was cer- 
tainly long before he was twelve ; at that 
age he remembers having helped in his 
father's office to set in type President Zach- 
ary Taylor's inaugural message. 

There were leisure moments between the 
working hours, and he occupied these in 
printing compositions of his own. How- 
ever precocious they may be, few young 
authors see their work immortalized by the 
dignity and permanence of type before 
they reach their teens ; but when this lad 
was only eleven, he set up and printed an 
ambitious work of his own. A thorough- 
bred is not less fearless of ditch and hedge 
than the budding author is of the magni- 



68 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

tilde of his theme. A veteran will stoop to 
write about rag-pickers or Punch and Judy, 
and go afoot in search of a commonplace 
subject ; but the beginner plunges his spurs 
into the flanks of Pegasus, and sends the 
winged horse galloping along the edge of 
the dizziest precipices of Olympus. Mr. 
Howells is called a "realist" now. He 
writes about men and women as they are, 
and will have neither villains of deep d)'e 
nor paragons of virtue in his stories ; for 
he believes that good and evil are mixed 
in all of us. But he was of a different 
mind when he wore a white apron, and 
stood before the printer's case, with its 
alphabetical compartments full of little 
metal letters. He boldly launched out 
then, not in any cockle-shell of rhyme, but 
in a hve-act blank-verse tragedy ; and it 
should be needless to say that the subject 
was the death of a Roman emperor. Such 
ventures carry too much sail for their bal- 
last ; and, like other lightly laden ships, 
this has not been heard from since. 

The literary ambition was fixed in him 
while he was v^ery )-oung, and it was stimu- 



WILLIAM DEAN HO IV ELLS. 69 

lated by the scholarly tastes of his father 
and by his own appetite for reading. In a 
desultory way he went first to a public and 
then to a private school. His favorite 
study was history, and the study he cared 
least for, and for which he had the least 
aptitude, was arithmetic. He liked to read 
aloud, and could do it well. Probably he 
lost less through the infrequency and irreg- 
ularity of his attendance than many others 
would have done, for he was one of the 
exceptional boys who do more for their 
education by observation and by reading, 
than schoolmasters are able to do for them. 
His favorite book at this period of his 
life was Goldsmith's History of Greece, 
■and side by side with it in his estimation 
were " Don Quixote " and the inexhaust- 
ible delights of the " Arabian Nights." 
The first novel he read was "The Trip- 
pings of Tom Pepper ; or, the Effects of 
Romancing," and the moral it was intended 
to inculcate struck him so sharply that he 
entered into a solemn pledge with his 
brother to avoid prevarication under every 
circumstance. His admiration for " Don 



70 BOYHOOD OF I'AAfOL/S AUTHORS. 

Quixote " was so <'Tcat that the author of 
it became his hero, and instead of content- 
ing- himself with the romance of the " mad 
knight " and Sancho Panza, as most read- 
ers do, he read besides the other works of 
the great Spanish author Cervantes, whom 
he still reckons as a peer of Shakspeare. 
He was a rather delicate boy, and though 
he was fond of outdoor sports and games, 
he was not expert in any one of them. 

In 1849 his father ^^^^^ ^^"^^ "Intelligen- 
cer," and moved his family to Dayton, 
where he purchased another paper, called 
the " Transcript." which he changed from 
a semi-weekly to a daily. This movement 
was not a success, and at the end of two 
years the failure of it was confessed. All 
the editor's sons, of whom there were four, 
could set type, and all of them had helped 
in producing the paper. After working in 
the composing-room until eleven at night, 
the boy we are writing about was often 
obliged to get up at four to carry the 
paper and deliver it to subscribers. But 
the boys took their misfortunes cheerfully, 
and when the last issue was printed, they 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 71 

all went down to the Miami and had a 
good swim. 

It was then that they took possession 
of the log cabin, and the year they spent 
there has been beautifully described by 
Mr. Howells himself. They did not regret 
this change from town to country. The 
father's passionate fondness for nature had 
been nourished by the English poets, and 
he had taught his children all that he felt 
for the woods and fields and open skies. 
They glazed the narrow windows, relaid 
the rotten floor, patched the roof, and 
papered the walls. 

" Perhaps it was my father's love of 
literature which inspired him to choose 
newspapers for this purpose," says Mr. 
Howells ; "at any rate he did so, and the 
effect, as I remember it, was not without 
its decorative qualities. He had used a 
barrel of papers bought at the nearest 
post-office, where they had been refused 
by the persons to whom they had been 
experimentally sent by the publisher ; and 
the whole first page was taken up by a 
story which broke off in the middle ot a 



72 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

sentence at the foot of the last column, and 
tantalized us forever with fruitless conjec- 
tures as to the fate of the hero and 
heroine." 

It took some days to make the repairs ; 
but when they were completed, the boys 
laid their mattresses on the sweet, new 
oak-plank of the floor, and slept hard — in 
every sense. One night they awoke, and 
saw their father sitting upright in his bed. 

"What are you doing?" they asked. 

" Oh, resting ! " he answered, jokingly 
referringf to the hardness of his bed. 

Their life was full of privations, but it 
was sweetened by their love of nature and 
their unfailing good-humor. The boys 
slept in the loft. "The rude floor rattled 
and wavered loosely under our tread, and 
the window in the gable stood open or 
shut at its own will. There were cracks in 
the shino-le through which we could see 
the "stars, and which, when the first snow 
came, let the flakes sift in upon the floor. 
I should not like to step out of bed into 
a snow-wreath in the morning, now ; but 
then I was glad to do it, and so far from 



WILLI AM DEAN HO WELLS. Ji 

thinking that or any thing in our life a 
hardship, I counted it all joy. 

" Our barrels of paper-covered books 
were stowed away in the loft, and, over- 
hauling them one day, I found a paper 
copy of the poems of a certain Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow, then wholly un- 
known to me ; and while the old grist-mill, 
whistling and wheezing to itself, made a 
vague music in my ears, my soul was filled 
with this strange, new sweetness. I read 
' The Spanish Student ' there, and ' Coplas 
de Manrique,' and the solemn and ever- 
beautiful ' Voices of the Nieht.' There 
were other books in those barrels which I 
must have read also, but I remember only 
those that spirited me again to Spain, 
where I had already been with Irving, and 
led me to attack seriously the old Spanish 
grammar, which had been knocking about 
our house ever since my father bought it 
from a soldier of the Mexican war. But 
neither those nor any other books made 
me discontented with the small-boy's world 
around me. They made it a little more 
populous with visionary shapes, but that 



7-1 novii{)on oi-' f.imocs ai'TIIors. 

was well, aiul ihcrc was room lor tlicin all. 
It was nol darkened vviUi cares, antl the 
duties in il \\v\v not many." 

At the end ol a year the foreman of a 
])rintino--officc in Xcnia canu; to the loo- 
cahin, and asked the Ik))' to take; tlu' i)lace 
of a delin(|nent hand, as he was known to 
be a good c'omj)ositor, swift and clean and 
steady. He tried the job, and qave satis- 
faction ; but time did not cam' the home- 
sickness lu; felt on leavinL;- tht; simpk; little 
cabin in the. woods, and he was obliged to 
return ; lew as its comforts were, he w-as 
held to it 1))' a bond of affection which no 
oflc-r of worldly prosperity could induce 
him to break. As long- as the lamily re- 
mained there, he staid with them ; and 
when at last th(>y again went to li\c; in 
the town, he took a place as compositor on 
the '• ( )hio State Journal," at a salar)- of 
four dollars a week. 

For sev(M-al )'ears after this, his litt:rar)' 
ambitions were subordinated to the neces- 
sities of mechanical labor as a printer and 
reporlcM-, but all the time he was equipi)ing 
himself for a luLiher and better kind ol 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 75 

work ; lie added French and Italian to his 
knowledge of languages, and made tlie 
great authors of the world his comi^anions. 
Then one morning he gathered courage 
to knock at the door of "The Atlantic 
Monthly" with a bundle of verses in his 
hand, and they were so good that the 
editor accepted and printed them. 

His advance was rapid after that, and 
in tim(t he became the editor of the 
" Atlantic," a position which Ik; held for 
nine years. Meanwhile, he was doing ori- 
ginal work of his own, and he has earned 
distinction as a poet, as a writer of plays, 
and, above all, as a novelist. 

Quite recently he went back to the place 
where the old log cabin had stood, but it 
was there no mon^ Thirty years had 
passed, and all that had happened since 
seemed so much like a dream, that, when 
he spoke of his boyhood to a little fellow 
who followed him, he himself could scarce- 
ly believe that what he told was true, and 
he says that he had a sense of imposing 
ujjon his listener. 



76 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



JAMES PAYN. 

It must be quite twenty years ago that I 
read a story called " A Perfect Treasure," 
as it came out week after week in a certain 
Enorlish maei'azine. The leadinof character 
was a youth with literary aspirations, and 
it was like readinoj" one's own autobios'- 
raphy to follow his adventures in search of 
a publisher ; the application of his expe- 
riences as possibilities to one's self was 
much more fascinating than the plot. 

If my memory is not at fault, a carriage 
runs away in the story, and the hero stops 
the horses, an incident which is always 
turning up, like the proverbial bad six- 
pence; but in tliis case the occupant of the 
carriage does not prove to be a beautiful 
heiress, nor does she instantly fall in love 
with her deliverer, as she niiofht be ex- 
pected to do. It is not a )ou ng and lovely 
person at all, but an old lady whom the 
hero recognizes as a famous authoress liv- 



A 






♦w-t-. 





^ 



h^ 









'^-'t*-;^^*— >v/^ 



^^/"^-T-^T^Xr-^^^-^^^^^l-^Z^^ 



JAMES PAVN. 77 

ing in the neighborhood ; and instead of 
marrying him and sharing a fortune with 
him, she only becomes his friend, and 
helps him to get a start in literature. 

Something in the character made me 
think at the time that it was drawn from 
life, though the runaway was, of course, an 
invention ; and many years afterward when 
I met James Payn, the author of the story, 
he admitted to me that the original was 
Mary Russell Mitford, who was actually his 
own literary godmother. 

She had been a friend of his father's, 
and lived at Swallowfield, not far from his 
own home at Maidenhead, on the Thames ; 
and she was a constant friend to the son, 
guiding him with advice and criticism, and 
opening doors for him which less fortunate 
beginners find closed and barred. A lit- 
erary godmother is a useful relation, and 
though she cannot make an author out of 
a boy who has no gift for literature, her 
experience and connections enable her to 
clear the way for one who has abilit)-, and 
only needs opportunity. Such a boy was 
James Payn. 



7.S iioMinon or- i-WMors ,u77/()h's. 

She ;il (irsi Iricd lo dissuade liiin li-oin 
inakiiiL; lilcraliirc a | nolcssioii, l)y |i(»mlin_t^ 
oiil ils iiic\ital>lc trials; and, lailiiiL^ in this, 
she used licr inlliicncc lo adxancc him in 
the LM'cat world ol literature wliicii he was 
l)()iiiul to explore. I low sound hei' ad\ ICC 
was, he prox'ed hy ex| »erieiu-e, and thoUL^ii 
he has vindicated the wisdom ol his own 
course, he has re echoed in his matui'it)' 
her \oi((' ol warning h'r the hcaieht ol the 
present L^cneralion : — 

" liiere is no pursuit so donbtliil, so lull 
ol risks, so snl)j(Ht lo despondenc)' and 
disappointments, so open to despair itsell," 
he sa)'s, m one ol his hooks. "Oh, m\' 
Noiidl; Iriend, w idi ' a turn lor liler.ilure,' 
think twice and ihrice helore c(»minitlin^' 
N'onrsell to it, or \on ma\ hitterK ic^ret to 
lind \onrsell where that 'Imn' ma)' lal<e 
yon! I he lilerar\' callinL^ is an excep- 
tional one, and excn at ihe ix'sl you will 
ha\(' trials and troiiMes ol which nou dream 
not, and Lo which no odicr calling' is ex- 
posed." 

This is distini-tl\- ol a piece willi tin; 
advice Miss Millord -'.uc him; hut as her 



JAMES PAYN. y() 

adiTionit ion did iioi hold him hack, his, I 
am ah^aid, will nol n_:straiii ihc amhilioiis 
youth who sees more i4'lory in the pen than 
in the sword or the sce[jtre. 

'rh(i lett(!rs she wrote to him \ver(! re- 
ccMitly in my possession, — a hundN; of 
them, tattered and stained, after the hoard- 
'\\v^ of forty years or more, and written in 
a small, crabljed, an_L^ular hand, which, 
after lilJiniLj' ^dl sidc'S of tlK; paper with tJK; 
closest lin(;s, had economized still further 
by running- ed^ewisc^ alonj^ the margin ; 
even the naj)s of the envelopes had been 
utilized for im'croscopic postscripts. 1 wish 
ever)' boy who is thinkiuL; of literature as 
a profession mi^^ht read them. 

" Be careful as to style," she wrote, in 
one of them ; " i^ive as much character as 
you can, anti as much Irulh, that beiiiL^ th(i 
foundation of all merit in literature and 
art." This was after her attempt to dis- 
suade him from e'nt(!rin_ir on a literary 
career had failetl, and previous to it she 
had endeavored to induce him to cK-vote 
himself to a business hfe, and make litera- 
ture the recreation of his leisure. As an 



Ho /;o]7/0()/) or /-'.i.uol^s auti/oks. 

cxampK' ol what could l)i' done in lliis di- 
rc^ctioii slu' poinlc'd oiil a nuTclianl, whom 
\\v. may call Mr. A. "II J had \\\{\ sons 
th('\' should all he in tratlo," she cUH-larcd, 
in anotluT ol dir Icttors. " It is du- most 
iiuU'|)(Mulont cariHM", tho most iiseliil, the 
most powerful for i^ood, as the press is the 
most powerlul for evil. I wish you knew 
Mr. A., — his frankness, his cordiality, his 
cheerlulness, his unix'ersal inlormation, his 
knack of l)rinoino' frientls too-ether, his per- 
lect hio"hd)ree(,lino-. If \ou knew Mr. A. 
)'ou would s(>e al once that the callini^ 
which such a man has lollowed can ha\e 
nolhini;' in it that is not honorahle. lie 
and James T. kields. the American book- 
seller (f(M- tlu'se i^reat })ublishers keep a 
store), are by far the most princely persons 
in heart and manner wIumh 1 ha\e v\v\' 
known, and each of them has mack' his 
own fortune — the one at five-and-thirt\', 
certainly not more — the otluM', ])erhaps. 
ten )'ears older, — both \\\{\\ hair as l;1oss\- 
and curly as \(nw own, and not a single 
silver ihreatl amono- the curls," 

Nothing;' but literature would satisfy his 



JAMES PAYN. 8 1 

soul, however ; he would not stoop to a 
desk and a ledger, through Mr. A. was 
willing to give him employment which 
would have allowed him from five o'clock 
to ten for his poetic studies, " more by 
four hours, on an average, than I ever 
had," that gentleman wrote. But the boy's 
resolve was inflexible, and authorship in an 
attic, even with only a crust to eat, seemed 
better than commerce and affluence. 

This was when he was about seventeen 
or eighteen years old ; and it will be inter- 
esting now to look back to his earlier years. 
His family held an excellent social position, 
and his education was amply provided for. 
First he was sent to a preparatory school ; 
then to Eton ; next to the Military Acad- 
emy at Woolwich ; and finally to Trinity 
College, Caml)ridge, from which he was 
graduated in 1854. He was not a studious 
boy in the sense of one who rapidly memo- 
rizes lessons, and shines at examinations ; 
he had the usual antipathy of persons with 
a literary bent for mathematics and formu- 
las of all kinds : but he was a diligent 
reader, and picked up knowledge in the 



82 UOYIIOOI) OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

unseen and unconscious ways which are 
unintelligible and impracticable to closer 
and more systematic scholars. 

I le was, no doubt, thought a cjueer Ijoy 
by his schoolfellows, but he had one gift 
that made him popular, as it has done 
since in a much larger circle. He was a 
born story-teller, and could weave the most 
wonderful stories out of his own head. 
Many a night he was compelled to sit up 
in bed romancing until one after another 
the older boys fell asleep. 

His school life was unhappy, both at the 
preparatory school and at Eton, b'^igging, 
or hazing, prevailed at tht- latter school, 
and flogging too. The head master was a 
dandified gentleman, who held the birch 
with jewelled fmgers. 

" Please, sir, it's my hrst fault," the 
culprit would sometimes plead. 

" I think I remember your name before," 
the pedagogue would reply to this. 

" It was my brother, sir." 

"V(M-y well, I'll look at my book ; " and 
the boy would shuffle away reprieved. 

One bo)', s(;venteen years of age, who 



JAMES PAVN. 83 

was leaving Eton to enter the army, was 
flogged a few days before his departure. 
It was a custom then (it may be still) for 
the boys to present the master with a ten- 
pound note when they left, dropping it 
delicately into a jar where he could find 
it after they had gone. But smarting from 
his punishment the departing scholar only 
pretended to drop his ten-pound note into 
the jar, and chuckled as he pictured to 
himself the master's fruitless hunt after 
that precious bit of tissue paper. " I can't 
flog him for flogging me unjustly," he re- 
flected, "but, dash it, I cany^?26^ him." 

The boys in the higher classes were fond 
of snubbing and patronizing those of the 
lower classes. " Lower Boy, what might 
be your name?" a diminutive fellow, with 
a white choker, inquired in a drawling voice 
of Payn one day. 

" Well, it uiight be Beelzebub, but it 
isn't," Payn replied ; whereupon the " fifth- 
form " boy attempted to thrash him. "It 
was the only proper punishment for 
' cheek.' no doubt, but I thought it hard 
that a repartee should be so ill-received," 



84 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

the victim has since said in describing this 
incident. 

Unless a boy had a taste for the classics, 
Eton in those days did little for him, except 
in establishing certain moral attributes ; 
and at the end of a year or so Payn, who 
cared more for Shakspeare than for all the 
Greeks, went away from the gray old aca- 
demic buildings with little added to his 
stock of knowledge. Resolute as he was 
in his choice of a profession, his relatives 
still persisted in other plans for him, and 
they now procured a nomination for him to 
the Military Academy at Woolwich, which, 
except that it educates boys for the British 
army, is identical in its purpose with the 
academy at West Point. 

To prepare him for Woolwich, he was 
sent to another preparatory establishment, 
and the system of "cramming" practised 
here was more hateful to him than any 
thing at his first school or at Eton. He 
had lonof and tedious lessons to learn of 
which he never knew the meaning, and he 
recited them as mechanically as a phono- 
graph. The purpose of the school was not 



JAMES PAYN. 85 

to instruct the mind and develop the rea- 
son, but to make the pupil seem to be 
familiar with studies of which he was icrnor- 
ant. The master was confident that Payn 
could pass the ordinary examination, but 
was afraid he could not stand the physical 
test, as he was near-sighted. 

"The examiners at Woolwich," said the 
master, " will tell you to look out of the 
window and describe the colors of the 
horses on the common. Mind you say 
* bay ' or ' gray ' very rapidly, for all horses 
are either bay or gray, and if you make 
a mistake they will not notice it." This 
illustrates the methods which were followed 
in all the studies. 

The work was so hard and so continu- 
ous, that little time was left for reading; 
but while he was here, Payn had the de- 
light of seeing his compositions published 
for the first time, though they were not yet 
printed. He had one schoolfellow named 
Raymond who could draw, another named 
Jones who could write like print, and a 
third named Barker who had a taste for 
finance. Together they started a weekl)- 



86 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

paper full of stories and poems, for circula- 
tion among their companions. Payn pro- 
vided the literary part, which Raymond 
illustrated, and Jones made as many copies 
as were needed. The circulation of the 
paper was left to Barker, who fixed the 
price at sixpence a copy. Their school- 
fellows did not appreciate the venture, but 
Barker was the treasurer of the school, and 
held in trust for the scholars a certain 
fund out of which he had to o-ive them two 
shillings weekly for pocket-money. See- 
ing that they would not buy the paper will- 
ingly, he calmly deducted sixpence from 
each allowance, and gave a copy of the 
paper to make up for it. "The 'masses' 
never know what is good for them," Mr. 
Payn says, in referring to this, " and our 
schoolfellows were no exception to the 
rule ; they called Barker a Jew, and, so to 
speak, ' murmured against Moses.' He 
was tall and strong, and fouo^ht at least 
half a dozen pitched battles for the mainte- 
nance of his object ; I think he persuaded 
himself, like Charles I., that he was really 
in the right, and set down their opposition 



JAMES PAYN. 8/ 

to mere ' impatience of taxation,' but in 
the end they were one too many for him, 
and, indeed, much more than one. He fell 
fiehtine, no doubt, in the sacred cause of 
literature, but also for his own sixpences, 
for we — the workers — never saw one 
penny of them." 

Payn succeeded in passing the examina- 
tion at Woolwich, but he distinguished 
himself there by his humorous escapades 
rather than by his scholarship, and before 
he was seventeen he had to resign on ac- 
count of illness. His friends then decided 
that he should enter the Church, and he 
was sent to a private tutor's to be prepared 
for the university. 

He was more content now, and for the 
first and only time in his life found pleas- 
ure in out-door exercise. " I had some 
companions of my own age who taught me 
the use of the leaping-pole. We scoured 
the country with fourteen-foot poles in our 
hands, and rarely found brook or lane 
too broad for us. Many a time, like 
Commodore Trunion, have I astonished 
a wagoner b)' fi)'ing from steep bank to 



88 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

bank, over the heads of himself and his 
horses." 

But the pen lost none of its attractions, 
and verse and prose poured from it. He 
went through all the agonies of the rejected 
contributor ; time and again he dropped 
his poems and essays into the post-office, 
only to receive them back in a month or so 
with an intimation that they would not do, 
and the dream of fame faded away in the 
wintry morning of despair. The sun be- 
gan to shine by and by, and never did it 
seem so splendid as the day when it re- 
vealed one of his poems printed in a 
periodical called " Leigh Hunt's Journal." 
Soon after this he wrote an article on cadet 
life at Woolwich, which was accepted by 
" Household Words," the paper edited by 
Charles Dickens. He thought that his 
fortune was made now, but there were 
many disappointments and many set-backs 
still in store for him. Fame is a coquettish 
maiden to woo, and pouts as easily as she 
smiles. The bo)^ with his first article in 
print thinks he has won her, but, though 
she stands by his side for a moment, she 



JAMES PAVjV. 89 

quickly runs away, and beckons to him 
from a milestone farther along the road. 
Payn had to pass many such milestones 
before he came up with her. Many things 
he wrote were published, but there was no 
certain acceptance for his work, and much 
of it came back. He published two little 
books of poems, which were civilly treated 
by the critics ; he made the acquaintance 
of Miss Mitford, who introduced him to 
Harriet Martineau, and also through the 
kindness of Miss Mitford he was intro- 
duced to De Ouincey, the famous essayist 
and opium-eater. At luncheon with De 
Ouincey, he was asked what wine he would 
take, and he was about to pour out a glass 
from the decanter that stood next to him, 
when De Ouincey's daughter whispered, 
" You must not take that ; it is not port 
wine as you seem to think." It was, in 
fact, laudanum, the drug to which her 
father was the most pitiable slave, and he 
presently helped himself to it as if it had 
been wine. 

A second time Fame seemed to have 
taken the young author by the hand. The 



90 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

publishers of a periodical placarded a stor}' 
which they had bought of him, over all the 
walls of Cambridge, where he was an un- 
dergraduate ; but he was again mistaken, 
though, as he says, he was not the first to 
confuse a placard on the wall wnth genuine 
reputation. He had twenty-six articles re- 
jected in one year, and it was fortunate that 
he was not wholly dependent on his pen 
for a living. He took his degree at the 
University, and quickly added to his aca- 
demic honors those which come by mar- 
riage. His earnings for the first year of his 
married life were thirty-two pounds fifteen 
shillings, or about one hundred and sixty- 
three dollars and seventy-five cents. The 
tide was turning, however, and the next 
year his income was quadrupled. 

Mr. Payn is now the editor of the " Corn- 
hill Magazine,'" and about a hundred vol- 
umes stand to his credit on the shelves of 
the library of the British Museum. What 
reader of English fiction is unfamiliar with 
his stories, in which humor, and wit, and 
great dramatic power are united ? He has 
gone on improving in his art ever since 



_/.I.U/:\ /'A )/\'. 91 

\\r. sat lip in l)ccl iinciUiiiL; stories lor his 
sclioollcllows, lik(; a lilllc Scliclicrc/adc, 
and \\v. is now a t)i)(' ol the |)ros|)croiis 
literary man ; hnt he is modest, and it 
seems to him, no donht, that he has not yet 
ov(>rtaken lame, who is still beckoninLT 
Iiim another leasjue ahead. 



92 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

The life of Whittier may be read in his 
poems, and by putting a note here and a 
date there, a full autobiography might be 
compiled from them. His boyhood and 
youth are depicted in them with such de- 
tail that little need be added to make the 
story complete ; and that little, reverently 
done as it maybe, must seem poor in com- 
parison with the poetic beauty of his own 
revelations. 

What more can we do to show his early 
home than to quote from his own beautiful 
poem "Snow-Bound"? There the house 
is pictured for us, inside and out, with all 
its furnishings ; and those who gathered 
around its hearth, inmates and visitors, are 
set before us so clearly that, long after the 
book has been put away, they remain as 
distinct in th(' memory as portraits that are 
visible day after day on the walls of our 



^ L^^m^io^i 7lii-&.-d-^-u^ cw^aJj^ <mn>(^ 
(M<J^ in)^' TA^L^^^ro-i c^^-JiJu^ of-juJuJ^ 



c^r-tn^jkj J\M^ JhjJ'J-LAJ-' 



I// IS iJ-^^^^ 




JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 93 

homes. He reproduces in his verse the 
landscapes he saw, the legends of witches 
a;id Indians he listened to, the school-fel- 
luws he played with, the voices of the 
woods and fields, and the round of toil and 
Pleasure in a country boy's life. And in 
other poems his later life, with its impas- 
sioned devotion to freedom and its lofty 
faith, is reflected as lucidly as his youth is in 
"Snow-Bound" and "The Barefoot Boy." 

He himself was " the barefoot boy," 
and what Robert Burns said of himself 
Whittier might repeat: "The poetic gen- 
ius of my country found me, as the pro- 
phetic bard Elijah did Elisha, at the 
plough, and threw her inspired mantle 
over me." *■ 

He was a farmer's son, born at a time 
w^ien farm-life in New England was more 
fruofal than it is now, and with no other 
heritage than the good name and example 
of parents and kinsmen, in whom simple 
virtues — thrift, industry, and piety — 
abounded. 

His birthplace still stands near Haverhill, 
Mass., — a house in one of the hollows of 



94 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

the surrounding hills, little altered from 
what it was in 1807, the year he was born, 
when it was already at least a century and 
a half old. 

He had no such opportunities for culture 
as Holmes and Lowell had in their youth. 
His parents were intelligent and upright 
people of limited means, who lived in all 
the simplicity of the Quaker faith, and 
there was nothing in his early surround- 
ings to encourage and develop a literary 
taste. Books were scarce, and the twenty 
volumes on his father's shelves were about 
Quaker doctrines and Quaker heroes. 
There was one novel in the house, but it 
was hidden away, for fiction was forbidden 
fruit in that household. No library or 
scholarly companionship was within reach ; 
and if his gift had been less than genius it 
could never have triumphed over the many 
disadvantages it had to contend with. In- 
stead of a poet, he would have been a 
farmer like his forefathers. But literature 
was a spontaneous impulse with him, as 
natural as the song of a bird, and he was 
not wholly dependent on training and op- 



JOHN GREEXLEAF IVHITTIER. 95 

portiinlty as he would have been had he 
possessed mere talent. 

Frugal from necessity, the life of the 
Whittiers was not sordid or cheerless to 
him, moreover, and he looks back to it as 
tenderly as if it had been full of luxuries. 
It was sweetened by strong affections, sim- 
ple tastes, and an unflinching sense of duty, 
and in all the members of the household 
the love of nature was so genuine that 
meadow, wood, and river yielded them all 
the pleasure they needed, and they scarcely 
missed the refinements of art. 

Surely there could not be a pleasanter 
or more homelike picture than that which 
the poet has given us of the family on the 
nieht of the crreat storm when the old 
house was snow-bound : — 

" Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed. 



96 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head ; 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 
Between the andiron's straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row. 
And close at hand the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood." 

The father was a plain, taciturn, yet 
prompt and decisive man, who in early life 
had explored the vast wilderness which 
extended from New Hampshire to Canada ; 
and sitting before the fire he told of his 
adventures : — 

" Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's wooded side ; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 
In trapper's hut or Indian camp." 

The mother was a woman of gentle 

ways, much loved and honored in the 

neighborhood, with a low voice and a 
benign face. 

" Our mother, while she turned her wheel. 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 97 

Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cocheco town, 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-marks to fourscore, 
Recalling in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free, 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways,) 
The story of her early days." 

Her sister, Mercy Hussey, lived with the 
family, and, like Mrs. Whittier, wore the 
gray dress and white cap of the Quakers. 

" The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate. 

Through years of toil and soil and care. 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart." 

The father's brother, Moses Whittier, 
also was a member of the family, — "a 
simple, guileless, childlike man," — and a 
great favorite, especially with the boys, as 
may be supposed from this picture: — 

" Our uncle, innocent of books, 
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks. 
The ancient teachers, never dumb, 
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 



98 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

In moons and tides and weather wise, 
He read the clouds as prophecies, 
And foul or fair could well divine. 
By many an occult hint or sign, 
Holding the cunning-warded keys 
To all the woodcraft mysteries. 

He told how teal and loon are shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got, 

The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun ; 

Till, warming with the tales he told. 

Forgotten was the outside cold, 

The bitter wind unheeded blew ; 

From ripening corn the pigeons fiew, 

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink 

Went fishing down the river-brink ; 

In fields with bean or clover gay. 

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 

Peered from the doorway of his cell ; 

The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 

And tier by tier his mud-walls laid ; 

And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell." 

There were four children, two boys and 

two girls. 

" Our elder sister plied 
Her evening task, the stand beside ; 
A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
Truthful, and almost sternly just. 



JOHN GREENLEAF IVHITTIER. 99 

Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
And make her generous thought a fact, 
Keeping with many a hght disguise 
The secret of self-sacrifice. 

Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat. 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes. 
Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise." 

For a picture of the poet himself, we 
must turn to the verses on "The Barefoot 
Boy " in which he says, — 

" Oh for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon. 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for ! 
I was rich in flowers and trees. 
Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
For my sport the squirrel played. 
Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone ; 
Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night, 
Whispering at the garden wall, 
Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond. 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond ; 



lOO /lit ]//(>(>/> <)J' {■AMUl'S .UIJIORS. 

Mine, oil liciidiiij.' OK h.iid irccs, 
Apples ol I Icspfiidt's ; 
Still, iis my hori/oii j^tcw, 
],;irf<i-;r ^rt-vv my ik lies too: 
All llic world I :,;i\v oi kiu'w 
Sccini'd ;i ( ompl<x < 'liiiicsL- toy, 
l''.i:,liioii((l lor ;i IliicIooI. hoy ! " 

'Hie n('io]il)or.s wero as simple and ns fru- 
gal as llic Whilticrs, llioiioh sniiK- of \\\v.\w 
were not so inlclliL-ciil. 'ilu'y still Ix.'licvcd 
in vvinlx's; and one iii'^du at a luiskin''-. 
when a l)ii>- l)|;i( k hiii- (anic Ijn/ziiio" into 
the room, il was dc^clarcd lo ix- an old 
woman who was siispcclcd ol wilcluralt. 
'\\\v\j struck at it, and kno(:k('<l it down; 
and when on the next day the old woman 
was lonn<l ill in lua' coLtagc, they wonid not 
believe llial llic hniises with which slu- was 
covered had Ixcii received in a fall down 
stairs as she cl. timed, and insi'iled that 
they were the marks of the blows struck 

at the i)nL;. ( )l(l C'a|)lain V , who lived 

near her, and had a honse and sevi;ral 
barns, covered them all o\'er with horse- 
shoes to keep the witch ont. 

Their ?;implicily is shown by still another 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. lOl 

Story. A man was seen looking- about in 
the woods with a irun, and orazini^ into all 
the bushes and up into the trees. At first 
they thought he wa.s a lunatic, and then, 
deciding that he was a British spy, they 
had him arrested. The judge examined 
him and found out that his only business 
was shooting birds. 

"Well," said the judge, "what do you 
do with them, — eat them ? " 

" No." 

" Do you sell them?" 

" No ; I study them." 

He was a celebrated ornithologist, but 
the statement that he devoted all his time 
to studying birds was so incredible that he 
would have been sent to jail as a spy if 
he had not been able to prove his truthful- 
ness by a letter from a Boston gentleman, 
which was in his possession. 

There must have, been some appeal to 
the imagination of a poetic youth in this 
mediaeval zVzexperience, and what charm 
there was in it Whittier certainly found. It 
is not his nature to complain, and there is 
no word of self-pity in all his works to show 



102 /!()]■ J /l)()/> OF FAMOUS AC/TI/OA'S. 

tliat h(' was ever dissatisfKxl with his con- 
tlition in boyhood ; hut one cannot help 
tliinkinL;" tliat tlic hiidchnc^ poet, with his 
dehcate sensibilities and perceptions, must 
have pined, now and then, for more books 
and the conversation of scholars. 

I d()ii])t if any boy ever rose to intellect- 
ual eminence who had fewer opportunities 
for education than Whittier. He had no 
such pasturage to browse on as is open to 
every reader, who, by simply reaching them 
out, can lay his hands on the treasures 
of English literature. He had to borrow 
books wherever they could be found among 
the neighbors who were willing to lend, and 
he thought nothing of walking several miles 
for one volume. The only instruction he 
received was at the district school, which 
was op(m a few weeks in midwinter, and at 
the. 1 laverhill Academy, which he attended 
two terms of six months each, paying for 
his tuition by work done In his spare 
hours. A feeble spirit would have lan- 
guished under such disadvantages, and 
how he would have l)ewailed them after 
outli\-ing them ! Ihit Whittier scarcely re- 



JOHN CKEENLEA1-- Hill 111 J:R. 103 

f(;rs to tlKMii, and, insK^ad of lK"i:;,L,^inc,^ for 
jjity, he takes th('in as jjart of the common 
lot, and seems to rememher only what was 
Ixjautiful and c^ood. 

Occasionally a stranger knocked at the 
door of the old homestead in the valley. 
Somelim(;s it was a distinguished Quaker 
from abroad, but oftener it was a pedler, 
or some vagabond begging for food, which 
was seldom refused. Once a foreigner 
came, and asked for lodgings for the night, 
— a dark, repulsive man, whose appearance 
was so much against him that Mrs. Whit- 
tier was afraid to admit him. No sooner 
had she sent him away, however, than she 
repented. " What if a son of mine were in 
a .strange land ! " sh(' thought. The young 
poet (who was not recognized as such) 
offered to go out in search of him, and he 
presently returned with him, having found 
him standing in th(; roadwayjust as he had 
been turned away from another house. 

" He took his seat with us at the supper 
tabl(;," says Whittier, in one of his jjrose 
skelch(.'s, " and when we were all gathered 
around the h(-arth that cold autumnal even- 



I04 iiovnoon of famous authors. 

ing-, he toltl us, partly l^y words, partly by 
gestures, the story of his life and misfor- 
tunes, amused us with descriptions of the 
grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny 
clime, edified my mother with a receipt 
for making bread of chestnuts, and in the 
morning, when, after breakfast, his dark, 
sullen face lighted up, and his fierce eye 
moistened with grateful emotion as, in his 
own silvery Tuscan accent, he poured out 
his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which 
had so nearly closed our doors against him, 
and, as he departed, we all felt that he had 
left with us the blessing of the poor." 

This reads like a passage from the 
" Vicar of Wakefield," and we are reminded 
of the same book by the poet's description 
of Jonathan Plummer, " maker of verses, 
pedler and poet, physician and parson," 
who came twice a year to the Whittier 
homestead. "lie brought with him pins, 
needles, tape, and cotton thread for my 
mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for 
my father ; and verses of his own compos- 
ing, coarsely printed, and ilhistrat(xl with 
rude woodcuts, for the delectation of the 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITHER. 105 

younger branches of the family. No love- 
sick youth could drown himself, no deserted 
maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount 
the gallows, without fitting memorial in 
Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, and 
shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors 
from Providence, furnishing the raw mate- 
rial of song and ballad. Welcome to us in 
our country seclusion, as Autolycus to the 
clown in ' A Winter's Tale,' we listened with 
infinite satisfaction to his readings of his 
own verses or to his ready improvisation 
upon some dramatic incident or topic sug- 
gested by his auditors. . . . He was scru- 
pulously conscientious, devout, inclined to 
theological disquisitions, and withal mighty 
in Scripture. He was thoroughly independ- 
ent, flattered nobody, cared for nobody, 
trusted nobody. W^hen invited to sit down 
at our dinner-table, he invariably took the 
precaution to place his basket of valuables 
between his legs for safe-keeping. ' Never 
mind thy basket, Jonathan,' said my father, 
' we sha'n't steal thy verses.' — ' I'm not sure 
of that,' returned the suspicious guest ; ' it 
is written, "Trust ye not in any brother.'"" 



I06 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

Another o-uest came to the house one 
day. It was a vagrant old Scotchman, who, 
when he had been treated to bread and 
cheese and cider, sang some of the songs 
of Robert Burns, which Whittier then heard 
for the first time, and which he never for- 
got. Coming to him thus, as songs reached 
the people before printing was invented, 
through gleemen and minstrels, their sweet- 
ness lingered in his ears, and he soon found 
himself singing in the same strain. Some 
of his earliest inspiration was drawn from 
Burns, and he tells us of his joy, when, one 
day after the visit of the old Scotchman, 
his schoolmaster loaned him a copy of that 
poet's works. " I began to make rhymes 
myself, and to imagine stories and adven- 
tures," he says in his simple way. 

Indeed, he began to rhyme almost as 
soon as he had learned to read, and he kept 
his gift a secret from all except his oldest 
sister, fearing that his father, who was a 
prosaic man, would think that he was wast- 
ing his time. He wrote under the fences, 
in the attic, in the barn, — wherever he 
could escape observation ; and, as pen and 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. to/ 

ink were not always available, he sometimes 
used chalk, and even charcoal. Great was 
the surprise df the family when some of his 
verses were unearthed — literally unearthed 
— from under a heap of rubbish in a garret. 
But his father frowned upon these evidences 
of the bent of his mind, not out of unkind- 
ness, but because he doubted the suffi- 
ciency of the boy's education for a literary 
life, and did not wish to inspire him with 
hopes which might never be fulfilled. 

His sister had faith in him, nevertheless, 
and without his knowledge she sent one of 
his poems to the editor of the " Free Press," 
a newspaper published in Newburyport. 
Whittier was helping his father to repair 
a stone wall by the roadside, when the 
carrier flung a copy of the paper to him, and, 
unconscious that any thing of his own was 
in it, he opened it, and glanced up and down 
the columns. His eyes fell on some verses 
called " The Exile's Departure : " — 

" Fond scenes which delighted my youthful existence, 
With feelings of sorrow I bid ye adieu, — 
A lasting adieu, for now, dim in the. distance, 
The shores of Hibernia recede from my view. 



I08 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

Farewell to the cliffs, tempest-beaten and gray, 

Which guard the loved shores of my own native 
land ! 
Farewell to the village and sail-shadowed bay, 
The forest -crowned hill, and the water -washed 
strand ! " 

His eyes swam. It was his own poem, 
— the first he ever had in print. 

" What is the matter with thee ? " his 
father demanded, seeinof how dazed he was ; 
but, though he resumed his work on tlie 
wall, he could not speak, and he had to 
steal a glance at the paper again and again 
before he could convince himself that he 
was not dreaming. 

Sure enough, the poem was there with 
his initial at the foot of it, "W., Haverhill, 
June I, 1826;" and, better still, this edi- 
torial notice:" If 'W.,' at Haverhill, will 
continue to favor us with pieces, beautiful 
as the one inserted in our poetical depart- 
ment of to-day, we shall esteem it a favor." 

The editor thought so much of " The 
Exile's Departure " and some other verses 
which followed it from the same hand, that 
he resolved to make the acquaintance of 



JOHN GREEiXLEAF U'HITTIER. 109 

his new contributor, and he drove over to 
see him. Whittier, then a boy of eighteen, 
was summoned from the fields where he 
was working, clad only in shirt, trousers, 
and straw hat ; and having slipped in at 
the back door, so that he might put his 
shoes and coat on, came into the room 
with " shrinking diffidence, almost unable 
to speak, and blushing like a maiden." 
The editor was a young man, not more 
than twenty-two or twenty-three, and the 
friendship that began with this visit lasted 
until death ended it. How strong and 
close it was, and how it was made to serve 
the cause of freedom, may be learned in 
the life of the great abolitionist, W'illiam 
Lloyd Garrison, for that was the editor's 
name. 

The poet's corner of the newspaper did 
not prove to be the temple of fame which 
Whittier imaofined it to be when the " Free 
Press " was dropped into his hands with his 
poem in it, and he still had an up-hill path 
before him. But he was not consumed with 
the desire for the glitter and noise which 
satisfy some ambitions, and he lost thought 



no BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

of himself in the great struggle for the 
emancipation of the negro which he joined 
with his friend Garrison. Fame never 
passes true genius by, however, and when 
it came it brought with it the love and 
reverence of thousands who recognize in 
Whittier a nature abounding in patience, 
unselfishness, and all the sweetness of 
Christian charity. 






./ 




^/7^i-'</>L^C^<^^p^ /t^^ •^/=w<_ <^/>z^ ^^^^-c — 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 1 1 1 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 

Mr. Stockton may be said to have been 
half a city boy and half a country boy, for 
his early years were divided between a life 
in town and a life in the country. He was 
born in Philadelphia, on April 5, 1834, and 
was one of twelve children, three of whom 
were by his father's first wife, and nine by 
a second wife. Six of the latter children 
survived to an adult age, and of these 
Frank was the first-born. His full name is 
Francis Richard Stockton, and he owes 
this, he tells us, to the romantic tastes of 
one of his half-sisters, who insisted on his 
being called Francis after the first King 
of France, who bore that name, and Rich- 
ard after Richard the Lion-hearted, King 
of England. 

When he was ten years old, his family 
moved from Philadelphia to a farmhouse 
in Bucks County, Penn., and, as no school 



112 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

was within reach, he and his brothers were 
allowed to run wild, and to amuse them- 
selves in the various ways that were sure 
to occur to high-spirited and healthy boys 
when left to their own resources. 

Nothing that Mr. Stockton has written 
is more amusing than the story of his own 
boyhood, as I have had the privilege of 
hearing him tell it. 

The house in Bucks County was one of 
the most fascinating places in the world 
for a boy. It was near the woods, where 
game could be found ; neighbors were few 
and far between ; and about a mile away 
there was a wild tract called Green Swamp, 
to which all sorts of awe-inspiring legends 
attached. It was said to be impenetrable 
to man, though haunted by strange beasts ; 
and in the middle of it was a upas-tree, 
which, like that of the fable, stifled all 
things that came near it. The rumored 
impenetrability of the swamp, and the 
legend of the upas, made it all the more 
inviting to the boys, of course, and they 
attempted again and again to explore it. 
The water and bog were dotted with hum 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTOX. II3 

mocks of solid land, like j)luins in a pud- 
ding, and they had to leap from one to the 
other of these. vSometimes they slipped, 
and got soaked in the ooze, but they were 
never able to get very far, and whether the 
upas is there or not is still a mystery. 

Somewhere under the roof of the house 
there was an apartment which was called 
the gun-room, — probably to distinguish it 
froni the other rooms, rather than from its 
use as the family arsenal. Exploring this 
one day, Francis the First and Richard the 
Lion-hearted, united in the small and mis- 
chievous person commonly called Frank, 
found an old gun without a lock, which 
had been condemned as useless. The idea 
of condemning a gun merely because it 
had no lock, struck him as a piece of folly ; 
it was easy to repair so slight a defect as 
that. So he loaded the gun, and took it 
out with him into the garden, carrying an 
ordinary hammer with him as he went. 
He put a percussion-cap on the nipple, 
and having rested his weapon on the frame 
of a hot-bed in the garden, — for it was a 
heavy old blunderbuss, — he took aim at 



114 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

a neighbor's chickens, and then struck the 
cap with the liammer in his hand. The 
gun went off, and three of the chickens 
fell. For a moment his experiment seemed 
to have been an unqualified success, but 
there was a stinging sensation near his eye. 
The cap had flown off the nipple, and struck 
him, and he nearly lost his sight. This 
was one of the many lessons he had, that it 
is not wise to assume that one's elders are 
all fools. 

The boys slept in a great, old-fashioned, 
four-post bed, and one night they turned 
it over, and climbed up into the high plat- 
form which it made when inverted. They 
were within a few inches of the ceilinfj, 
and they proposed to sleep in this way ; 
but their mother was brought to the scene 
by the noise they had made, and they 
had to replace the bed in its proper 
position. 

They told stories after they went to bed, 
Frank and his brother John collaborating 
for the amusement of their younger brother 
William, who lay at the foot of the bed. 
Frank would start the story, and at the 



FRAXCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 115 

point where he left off, John would take it 
up, depending on his own imagination for 
the continuation. The end was often very 
different from what the beofinner had in- 
tended it to be ; but the uncertainty of the 
development quickened the interest, both 
for the narrator and the listener, who, if he 
dared to go to sleep during the story, was 
immediately kicked out of bed. 

Frank was small, and rather slio-ht of 
figure, but he was as athletic as the rest. 
They were all good riders and swimmers, 
and were fond of gardening and carpentr)-. 
Their knack in the latter was remarkable. 
They used the full -sized tools of a working 
carpenter, and built houses which, though 
not fitted for human occupation, would 
have been too large for any doll but one 
of extravagant tastes. 

At the end of three years their parents 
decided that the untrammelled life the boys 
were leading would not do any longer, and 
they returned to Philadelphia. Frank had 
already been in a private school, and he 
was now sent to a public school, from 
which he passed into the Central High 



Il6 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

School. He was graduated with the de- 
gree of Bachelor of Arts. 

He was not an ambitious boy, but a 
clever one, and it was easy for him to 
stand second in his class. His natural 
bent was in the direction of literature, and 
he was not more than ten years old when 
he began to write verses. On one occa- 
sion he sent a poem to a religious paper 
published in Baltimore, and when it was 
returned to him he made up his mind that 
the editor was an ignorant person, who 
could not appreciate a good thing, and 
who would have rejected the works of 
Shakspeare and Milton had they been 
offered to him. To prove this point, he 
copied out one of Milton's devotional 
poems, and, having attached a fictitious 
name to it, he sent it to the same editor. 
He was chagrined to find, however, that 
the editor at once recognized its merits 
and printed it, though he, this arbiter of 
the destiny of literary aspirants, did not 
detect the fictitious character of the alleged 
author. 

The restraints of the city did not curb 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 1 17 

the frolicsome propensities of Frank and 
his brothers. Their father was a devout 
man, who frequently entertained the minis- 
ters of his denomination ; and one day, 
when some of these gentlemen were guests 
at dinner, it was noticed with surprise that 
all the boys refused mince-pie. They 
seemed to be choking, and rushed away 
from the table when It was offered to them. 
The pie had been made the evening before, 
and during the night the boys had stolen 
into the pantry, and substituted mush for 
the mince-meat. They had many a clan- 
destine supper in their night-dresses, and 
used to slide down the banisters, because, 
as one of their number impressed upon 
them (very likely it was Frank) , the crack- 
ing of their knees would perhaps have 
awakened the household. 

They had a secret society, and when a 
candidate presented himself for admission, 
this question was asked him : "If your 
mother was being chased by an Indian who 
wanted to tomahawk her, and she hid her- 
self in some place that you knew of, what 
would you say to the Indian if he asked 



Il8 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

you where she was ? " If the candidate 
admitted that he would deceive the Indian 
under such circumstances as these, he was 
considered worthy of admission, but if he 
said his adherence to truth would compel 
him to sacrifice his mother to the savage, 
he was rejected. 

They also belonged to another society, 
the Crazy Club, of which Frank was the 
chief officer, his title being the Grand 
Worthy Maniac. The meetings of the 
club were held in boats on the river, and 
the Grand Worthy Maniac exercised a des- 
potic authority over the members. They 
were required to obey his mandates im- 
plicitly, and he would sometimes order one 
of them to take off his clothes, and swim, 
on a moonlight night, into the middle of 
the stream, and singr comic sones while 
floating there. 

Once they ventured to play at pirates, 
and rowed out in chase of another boat 
which some boys were pulling. The latter 
did not seem in the least alarmed, nor did 
they make any attempt to avoid capture. 
When they were overtaken, the pirate chief 



FRAXCIS RICHARD STOCKTOX. 119 

demanded, " What do you mean by coming 
out on this river ? " But they made no 
answer, and showed no intention of resist- 
ance. Tliis nonplussed the pursuers, who 
had imagined that there would be a hand- 
to-hand combat, in which they would be 
the victors. " What do you mean?" they 
repeated. Still the other boys had nothing 
to say ; and instead of making them walk 
the plank as they had intended, the pirates 
rowed off very quietly, saying, " Now, never 
do it again, that's all." Piracy did not 
seem to be as exciting as some stories 
made it appear. 

Behind all this nonsense and mischief 
there was plenty of hard work and solid 
readinof. Frank was crraduated from the 
Central Hip-h School when he was eifjhteen 
years old, and was intended to be a physi- 
cian ; but, for some unexplained reason, he 
took up the art of wood-engraving. His 
ambition was to be an author, and he p-ave 
his leisure to writinor articles and stories, 
many of which were accepted and printed 
while he was still a boy. Then he gave 
up w^ood-engraving altogether, and entered 



I20 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

on a journalistic career, which, when " St. 
Nicholas" was started, in 1873. led him 
into the position of assistant editor of that 
attractive magazine, under the editorship 
of Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge. Long before 
this he had made a reputation as a humor- 
ous and fanciful writer, but it was not 
until he was forty years old, or more, that 
he made his greatest hit with the Rudder 
Grange stories, in which the rare quality 
of his genius was first discovered. Thir- 
teen years have gone by, each year bring- 
ing him some new honor, and he does not 
look a day older now than he did then. 
He still looks like a man of thirty-five, and 
he may be considered an instance of what 
he terms " protracted youth." 



/^ ^>U^ ^^ -^ '^^^^ /^/fe^t^le^ ,_ 
^ ^^ (lu.H*k^ ;^i^H^ib ^^^^S'^ 



7^^-A^ r"<^ a«^^ ^ *^ i<<jf^'^*y , 




EDMUiM) CLARI:.\CI: S 11. DM AN. 121 



l'. DM UNI) CI.ARI'.NCI'. S'll'.nMAN. 

\a:\ {he reader pictiii-e to liiniscll an old 
iium ill such a cosUinu' as a iJiospcroiis 
lawyer would wear lorly years ai;o, vvilli a 
(leliaiil I)oy standinii; Ix'lore liim. 'I'lie old 
man is icproviiii^-, and \\\v. hoy lias noL yet 
heen reduced to the point ol pe.ililcnce. 

"Couie. sir." says the elder severely, 
vvishini;- to show that the culprit's ollence is 
without a parallel, "did you ever hear ol 
any j;reat man who lan away h-om home in 
his youlh ? " 

" Yes," the hoy hlurls oul lo ihe surprise 
of his (luestioner. 

" And who was it, pray?" 

" Mastei-m;ui Ready, sir." 

" Masteiinan Ready" is not a name to Ix; 
found in dictionaries of illustrious pei'soii- 
a^es, hut to the imaL;inaliv(^ hoy C"a|)L. 
MarryaL's lun'o set-med to aflord a very 
good i)recedent in justilicaLiun ot" his (on 
duct. 



122 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

The okl man's sense of humor was 
touched; and for some time afterwards — 
long- enough for him to see the folly of his 
excuse — the boy was nicknamed " Master- 
man Ready." 

His real name was Edmund Clarence 
Stedman ; and his Mentor was his great- 
uncle, James Stedman of Norwich, Conn., 
who was bringing him up. 

Thouoh born in Hartford, Conn., he was 
taken while an infant to Plainfield, N.J. ; 
and in his sixth year, when his mother, 
who had been widowed, married a second 
tinie, he was transferred to the care of this 
uncle at Norwich, where he remained until 
he reached the age of fifteen. 

It was Norwich Town, two miles away 
from the city of Norwich ; a quaint old 
place not unlike Portsmouth, full of colo- 
nial houses, and historic families like the 
Huntinetons, the Trumbulls, and the 
Stedmans themselves. It was the birth- 
place of Benedict Arnold. Old traditions 
were believed in, and old customs observed. 
No town in New England celebrated 
Thanksgiving as Norwich Town did. Enor- 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 123 

mous bonfires were burned, such as re- 
duced ordinary bonfires to glow-worms by 
comparison ; barrels strung on masts sixty 
feet high, begged or bought by gangs of 
boys in the surrounding neighborhood for 
months before. A capital place for any 
boy, one would say, and especially for a boy 
of an imaginative turn of mind with a taste 
for romance. 

There were six boys in the house of 

James Stedman, so that there was no lack 

of companionship ; and a curious thing 

about these six boys was that they were 

three pairs of brothers, the elder of each 

pair being two years the senior of the 

younger, while the respective ages of each 

pair were alike; or, in other words, the 

eldest of one pair was the same age as 

the eldest of the other pairs, and the age 

of the youngest was the same in each case 

also. There was not a place for berr>'ing 

or nutting that they did not know, nor was 

there an adventure in which they did not 

unite. And at night, when they reached 

home, they sat up in bed telling stories; and 

in this amusement, as in their expeditions 



124 BOYHOOD OF IwlMOUS AUTHORS. 

in the woods, Edmund Clarence Stedman 
was tlie leader. 

A small, active, sinewy little fellow he 
was, of a slender frame but great endur- 
ance, sensitive, impulsive, passionate ; and 
though he was what may be called an out- 
of-door boy, rejoicing in physical exercises, 
— a good swimmer, a champion runner, 
and expert in woodcraft, into the mysteries 
of which he was initiated by a half-breed 
named Ira, — he was as eaofcr for learninof 
as for sport, and he stood at the head of 
his class in the Norwich Academy. 

But despite his vitality he was not a 
happy boy. He had all the painful sensi- 
bilities of the poetic temperanicmt, and 
often withdrew from companionship to be 
alone with his own thoughts. His great- 
uncle vv^as a disciplinarian, a just, well-mean- 
ing but exacting man, quite incapable, ap- 
parently, of understanding the ultimate 
value of the fiery and imaginative character 
of his nephew, though he was of the great- 
est use to the latter in his studies, and 
found in him such a pupil as a thorough- 
going scholar loves. 



EDMUND CLAREXCE STEDMAX. 1 25 

Except in their love of learning they had 
little in common, however, and the boy re- 
belled against the ascetic life around him. 
and that bitter sectarian feeling which ran 
so high in Norwich Town that the young 
people of one denomination were forbidden 
to play with those of other churches. Then 
— and this was the principal source of his 
unhappiness — he was separated from his 
mother, and to a boy of his temperament 
no deprivation could be more serious than 
this. How pitifully his soul year^ied for 
her through all the years he spent in Nor- 
wich Town ! How in every moment of de- 
spair it seemed that only her presence was 
needed to make him happy, and set him 
right ! How clearly she would have been 
able to see what all the rest misunderstood ! 
He was much like her in his tastes, and he 
had inherited from her a love of poets and 
poetry which deepened the sympathy be- 
tween them. She did nor discourage or 
disparage the poetic faculty, as parents 
often wisely do. "My son, be a poet," she 
said, and he hardly needed her direction, 
for he had begun to rhyme in infancy. 



126 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

Scott, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron 
cast the spell of their genius over him, and 
lightened the burdens of many of his 
weary hours. 

At the aee of fifteen he went to Yale, 
with the largest class that ever entered that 
college, — a class, too, that was notable for 
its literary ability. George W. Smalley 
(" G. W. S."), the London correspondent 
of the "Tribune;" Andrew D. White, 
afterwards president of Cornell University; 
Isaac H. Bromley, Charlton T. Lewis, and 
Delano Goddard, the latter three all jour- 
nalists of wide reputation, — were among 
the members. 

Here he distinguished himself by his 
Greek and English compositions, and took 
a first prize in his sophomore year. But 
he did not remain to graduate, though in 
after years the college placed him among 
its alumni with the degree of M.A. He 
wanted to see the world, and he set out 
in search of adventure, on an expedition 
which ended with less romantic results 
than he expected. 

He wavered between the choice of liter- 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 127 

ature and journalism, but the latter seemed 
to offer the more solid ground ; and one 
day when he was in New York he sought 
an audience with Horace Greeley, who was 
his ideal of a great editor. Mr. Greeley 
sat in an armchair, reading a paper, while a 
shoe-black was polishing his shoes, a lux- 
ury to which, it is said, the famous journal- 
ist did not often treat himself. The boy 
approached timidly and reverently, and in- 
quired whether there was any vacancy on 
the staff. " No, young man," was the curt 
reply, and this one word closed the inter- 
view as a shutter extinguishes a dancing 
sunbeam. The novice had been in the pres- 
ence of his hero, however, and the brief 
speech lingered in his ear as if it had been 
a burst of eloquence. 

The poetic quality was not an enfeebling 
trait in this youth. He had fine courage 
and manly resolution. He went back to 
Norwich, and at nineteen became the ed- 
itor of the Norwich " Tribune," engaging 
his old classmate, Isaac H. Bromley, to 
assist him. Then he took charee of the 
" Herald," published at Winsted, Conn., im- 



128 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

parting to it a dignity and an originality 
which country newspapers do not usually 
have ; and a year or two later he removed 
to New York, where, after a while, he 
found the vacancy on Horace Greeley's 
staff for which he had been lookinof. 

He went to the front as war correspond- 
ent, and showed all the courage, endur- 
ance, and fertility of resource, which that 
post requires. Had he chosen, he might 
have filled the highest positions in journal- 
ism ; but literature in the form of poetry 
and criticism had a greater attraction for 
him, and his work in this direction has re- 
vealed the unusual combination of creative 
imagination and dispassionate judgment. 
All sorts of honors have come to him, but 
he remains a boy in the earnestness of his 
friendships and the freshness of his enthu- 
siasms. His mother is an idol still, and of 
her he has written in one of his poems, — 

" She seemed an angel to our infant eyes ! 
Once when the glorifying moon revealed 
Her who at evening by our pillow kneeled, — 
Soft-voiced and golden-haired, from holy skies 
Flown to her loves on wings of Paradise, — 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. I2g 

We looked to see the pinions half concealed. 

The Tuscan vines and olives will not yield 
Her back to me, who loved her in this wise, 

And since have little known her, but have grown 
To see another mother tenderly 

Watch over sleeping children of my own. 

Perhaps the years have changed her : yet alone 
This picture lingers ; still she seems to me 
The fair young angel of my infancy." 



I30 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

The boyhood of Edward Everett Hale 
reads like a chapter in one of his own 
stories of home life. There was nothing 
miraculous or romantic in it ; no prodi- 
gious feats of learning, no martyrdom, and 
no canonization of saints. 

His father and mother were just the 
kind of people that he holds up to admira- 
tion in his books, — full of good sense, 
liberality, and originality ; controlling their 
children with a secure hand, but directing 
instead of driving them, and reasoning with 
them instead of scolding. Piety in that 
household never wore a long face ; benevo- 
lence worked in deeds and not in words. 

At the end of his first month in the 
Boston Latin School, the boy came home 
with a report which showed that he was 
ninth in a class of fifteen ; and he dreaded 
handing it to his mother, as he thought 
she would be displeased to find him so low 



FROM 



EDWARD'E..HALE. 



39 Highland St. 



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EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 131 

in the class. " Oh," she said, " that is 
no matter. Probably the other boys are 
brighter than you. God made them so, 
and you cannot help that. But the report 
says that you are among- the boys who be- 
have well. That you can see to, and that 
is all I care about." 

This little incident shows the reasona- 
bleness which guided the conduct of the 
Hale household. A boy was expected to 
do all in his power, but no more ; and if 
he could not do it one way, he was allowed 
to attempt it by some new method, which 
often proved to be no less successful on 
account of its novelty. He was not forced 
to conform to patterns, simply because they 
fitted other boys, though there was no lack 
of discipline and no toleration of the wilful 
misuse of time. The motto that has since 
become famous was so closely lived up to, 
that it might have been as unceasingly in 
the ears of the family as the ticking of the 

clock : — 

" Look up, and not down ; 
Look forward, and not back ; 
Look out, and not in ; 
Lend a hand." 



132 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

The boy who was born in Boston on 
April 3, 1822, came of a stock which justi- 
fied the expectation of a brilHant and use- 
ful career for him. His grand-uncle was 
Nathan Hale, who, when he was led out 
to execution as a spy in the Revolutionary 
war, said with his last breath, " I regret 
that I have only one life to surrender for 
my country ; " and his uncle on his mother's 
side was Edward Everett the orator, after 
whom he was named. His father was a 
man who combined scholarship with activ- 
ity in public affairs, and it was through his 
advocacy that the first steam railway was 
built in Massachusetts. 

Great are the chansfes that have taken 
place in Boston since then. The boy is 
a man, and looking back says, "I have 
sailed my bark boat on the salt waters, 
where I now can sit in the parlors of 
my parishioners. I have studied botany 
on the marshes, where I now sit in my 
own study to prepare the notes which I 
read to you. I rode in triumph on the 
locomotive which hissed over the first five 
miles that were ready of that highway to 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 133 

the West, where now she might run five 
thousand." 

A good half of Boston is buih on land 
recovered from the sea ; and there are 
solid streets and houses where, less than 
half a century ago, the water flowed, sink- 
ing- and risinor with the tides. 

He was sent to a dame-school while he 
was still an infant ; but he learned little 
there, and probably was not expected to 
learn. As the children droned through 
their lessons, he sat quietly watching the 
motes of dust dancing in the sunbeams 
that streamed through the blinds, and his 
o-reatest interest was in the makine of 
sand-pies on the floor. When he was 
placed in a big yellow chair in the middle 
of the room, he could not be made to un- 
derstand that it was lor some misconduct. 

Then he was sent to a school kept by 
a man who was amiable but incompetent, 
and he gathered scarcely more here than 
he did in watching the sunbeams. " A 
feather-pillow sort of a man was ' Simple ' 
the master, — a good-natured, innocent 
fellow, who would neither set the bay on 



134 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

fire nor want to, who could and would 
keep us out of mischief for five or six 
hours a day, and would never send us 
home mad with rage, or injustice, or am- 
bition." 

He was sometimes late in coming to 
school ; and in order to reproach him, 
Edward Everett Hale, then a small and 
audacious lad, marshalled all the boys in 
their seats, and had a class out to recite 
before he arrived. 

This saucy boy had strong opinions on 
many subjects at this early age, and he put 
little value on schools and schoolmasters. 
But he was a great reader, and his reading 
fertilized his mind as a field is fertilized 
before the sower scatters the seed. 

Grimm's " Fairy Stories " opened the 
world of magic to him ; and the poems of 
Sir Walter Scott had such a fascination for 
him, that there never was a time after he 
had read them, when he could not quote 
long passages from memory. As with all 
imaginative boys, a book of travels trans- 
ported him to the very spot described ; 
and as he read an account of the Arctic 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 135 

regions, the house melted into air, and he 
seemed to be sittinor in the cabin of an 
ice-bound ship, held fast in the jaws of 
the polar sea, with the aurora flashing up 
and down the sky. Happy is the boy 
whose imagination has such a spread of 
wing that he can leave every care on 
earth behind, and forget himself in a book ! 
Life has no greater boon than this, and it 
is the special gift of youth which age can 
seldom claim. 

When he was nine years of age he was 
sent to the Boston Latin School, where 
Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John 
Hancock, Edward Everett, and Charles 
Sumner had been educated. It is the 
oldest school in America, and one of the 
best ; and in it the subject of our sketch 
made substantial progress, though he sel- 
dom stood higher than ninth in a class of 
fifteen. Unlike most budding authors, he 
was fond of arithmetic ; and another pecu- 
liarity of his was, that he could not for the 
life of him see why his opinions on mat- 
ters of education were not regarded with 
as much consideration as the master's. " I 



136 nO'HOOI) OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

had a very decided feeling" that it was as 
fittincr that he should consult me as I 
hini," he says with charming frankness. 

All the while he was reading diligently ; 
and two summers he was taken out of 
school to read at home, an excellent plan 
when a boy is growing fast, though it 
would be a pity if he should miss the 
hardening and sharpening which come 
from association with other boys. 

Another privilege he had which any boy 
who aspires to become an author or a 
journalist might well envy. Who that is 
stirred with such an ambition has not 
looked up with awe and longing, to the 
front of a great newspaper-office, wishing 
that he might be admitted to its secrets, 
its labors, and its honors? Nothing in the 
world has seemed so o-lorious, not even 
the Capitol, pillars, steps, dome, and all, 
as a newspaper-building in some by-street 
of the city, with its lights shining in the 
upper story where the compositors are 
setting type, tjie presses rattling in the 
basement, and the entrance with editors, 
reporters, and messengers coming and go- 
ing at all hours of the day and night. 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 1 37 

Well, the father of Edward Everett Hale 
was the editor of the Boston "Adver- 
tiser," and the offices of that paper resem- 
bled a nursery to his son, who, like Wil- 
liam Dean Howells, learned to set type 
almost as soon as he had learned to read. 
He not only mastered the mechanical parts 
of the business of making a newspaper, 
but wrote articles for the "Advertiser" 
while he was still a boy, and he translated 
an article from a French paper for it 
before he was eleven : a good beginning 
for one who in after-life was to fill in turn 
every position, from that of a reporter, to 
the much loftier perch of the controlling 
editor. 

In 1835 he entered Harvard University, 
where Lowell was already a student ; and 
his literary tastes were fostered there by 
Edward Tyrrel Channing, the professor of 
English language and literature, who also 
taught Dana, Story, Holmes, Parkman, 
and many others who have since made 
their mark in authorship. Longfellow was 
another of the professors. " He came to 
Cambridge in our first years. He was not 



138 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

SO much older than we as to be distant, 
was always accessible, friendly, and sympa- 
thetic. All poor teachers let the book 
come between them and the pupil. Great 
teachers never do : Longfellow never did. 
We used to call him ' Head,' which meant 
head of the modern language department." 

Hale was graduated in 1839, and about 
that time he made the acquaintance of two 
new authors through their books. One 
was Alfred Tennyson, and the other John 
Ruskin. The first copy of Tennyson that 
fell into his hands had been brought 
from England by Emerson, who was 
always kind to young people, and lent 
his books freely. Then Ruskin appeared, 
and his writings developed the love of the 
beautiful in the young student, and gave 
him the habit of a close observation of 
nature out of doors. Scarcely any thing 
in the shape of a book was uninteresting 
or unprofitable to him ; but he confesses 
that he could not enjoy Locke's " Essay 
on the Human Understanding," and that 
he went to sleep over it. 

After his graduation, he taught Latin and 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 139 

Greek for two years, and at the same time 
wrote articles and stories for the papers. 
He is as widely known now as an author 
as he is as a preacher; but when he was 
twenty-four he entered the Christian min- 
istry, and he has never given it up. The 
best of his endeavors have been devoted 
to it, and in his life he has been governed 
by a principle which he uttered before a 
college society, — " We professional men 
must serve the world, not, like the handi- 
craftsman, for a price accurately repre- 
senting the work done ; but as those who 
deal with infinite values, and confer bene- 
fits as freely and nobly as Nature." 



I40 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Some winter's evening, when the reader 
of this is in a mood to beguile himself with 
a pleasant book of essays, I would advise 
rhim to take down from the shelf the " Fire- 
side Travels " of James Russell Lowell, in 
which he will find among other good things 
a picturesque account of Cambridge as it 
was in the poet's boyhood. " Cambridge 
Thirty Years Ago " he calls it, but the time 
he describes has crept back twenty years 
more since it was written, and to us it is 
a picture, not of thirty years, but of half a 
century, ago. 

Cambridge was not the noisy and popu- 
lous place then that it is now. It was not 
linked to Boston by the endless chain of 
horse-cars which are runninof to and fro 
night and day. It was a quiet country 
village, resembling the country villages of 
England, and resting in the shade of wide- 



eLMWOOO, 
CAMBRIDGE MASS. 



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JAMl'lS RifSSKIJ. LOWELL. I41 

branched, thick-leaved elms, lindens, and 
horse-chestnuts. TIk; lv(;volution was as 
fresh in t]i(; ])ul)lic mind as th(' Civil War 
is to-day ; and the recent presence of the 
British soldiers could be traced in the 
hooks from which they had hun^- \\\v'\\' 
hammocks, and in the dents made by their 
muskets on the floor of the minister's 
library in the old gambrel-roofed house 
where the picture of a lady was shown with 
a slit in the canvas, which a red-coat had 
made with a thrust of his rapier. 

People were still living who remained 
loyal to King George ; and women still 
washed clothes in the town spring. One 
coach carried all the passengers there were 
between the village and Boston. A youth 
named Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had 
just gone forth from the gambrel-roofed 
house to study medicine in the schools of 
Paris, was spoken of as a sprightly versifier, 
who might make his mark in literature if 
he chose. The poetical accomplishments 
of another young man named Longfellow 
had been heard of in the community, 
though Ik; had not yet been invited to take 



142 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

a professorship In the college as he was a 
few years later, Ralph Waldo Emerson 
was preaching in Boston,, and John Green- 
leaf Whittier, a young Quaker of Haverhill, 
was fillinof an editor's chair, and sendinor 
out verses that thrilled with the promise of 
genuine lyric feeling. 

Though he was destined to become their 
intimate in after-years, Lowell knew none 
of these at this time. They had all begun 
the battle of life, while he was still a 
schoolboy, with his hands In his pockets, 
and his eyes open to all the sights of the 
little world around him. 

" Everybody knew everybody, and all 
about everybody," he says In " Fireside 
Travels ; " " and village wit, whose high 
'chanofe was around the little market-house 
In the town square, had labelled every 
more marked individuality with nicknames 
that clunof like burs." There was the 
village whitewasher, all of whose belong- 
Ines emblemized his trade. He white- 
washed his trees, and grew the whitest of 
china asters In his garden. He wore a 
white neckcloth; and kept white fowls. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1 43 

white ducks, and white geese. There was 
an old Scotch gardener who told romantic 
stories, and showed an imaginary French 
bullet, sometimes in one leg, sometimes in 
the other, and sometimes toward nightfall 
in both. One of the two grocers was a 
deacon, upon whom the boys were fond of 
playing a familiar joke. 

One of them would enter the shop, and 
ask, " Have you any sour apples, deacon ? " 

** Well, no, I haven't any just now that 
are exactly sour ; but there's the bell-flower 
apple, and folks that like a sour apple gen- 
erally like that." 

Another boy would then come in, and 
say, " Have you any sweet apples, dea- 
con : 

" Well, no," the deacon would reply, " I 
haven't any just now that are exactly sweet ; 
but there's the bell-flower apple, and folks 
that like a sweet apple generally like that." 

Thus it was that the deacon's apples 
were suited to the customer's taste, whether 
he wanted them sour or sweet. 

The barber's shop was a sort of museum, 
and no boy ever went rfiere to have his 



144 I'OYIIOOn OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

hair cut tliat \\v. was not accompanied by 
troops of friends, wlio thus inspected the 
curiosities o;;ratis. 

" What a charming- place it was, how full 
of wonder and delight ! " says Lowell in the 
essay already quoted. "The sunny little 
room, fronting south-west upon the com- 
mon, rang with canaries and Java sparrows, 
nor were the familiar notes of robin, thrush, 
and bobolink wanting ; antl a large white 
cockatoo harangued vaguely at intervals, 
in what we believed on R., the barber's, 
authority to be the I lottentot language. 
. . . The walls were covered with curious 
old Dutch prints, beaks of albatross and 
penguin, and wliales' teeth fantastically 
engraved. Inhere was b^redcM'ick the Great, 
\\\\\\ head drooped plottingly, and keen 
sidelong glance from iind(;r the three- 
cornered hat. There hung Bonaparte, too, 
the long-haired, haggard general of Italy, 
his eyes sombre with prefigured destiny ; 
and there was his silent grave, — the 
dream and the fulfilment. (lood store of 
sea-fights there was also ; above all, Paul 
Jones in the ' Bonhomme Richard,' the 



JAMES RUSSELL L^OWELL.. 1 45 

smoke rolling courteously to leeward, that 
we might see him dealing thunderous work 
to the two hostile vessels, each twice as 
large as his own, and the reality of the 
scene corroborated by streaks of red paint 
leaping from the mouth of every gun. 
Suspended over the fireplace, with the 
curling-tongs, were an Indian bow and 
arrows ; and in the corners of the room 
stood New Zealand paddles and war-clubs, 
quaintly carved. The model of a ship in 
glass we variously estimated to be worth 
from a hundred to a thousand dollars — 
the barber rather favoring the higher valu- 
ation, though never distinctly committing 
himself. Among these wonders, the only 
suspicious one was an Indian tomahawk, 
which had too much the peaceful look of a 
shingling-hatchet. Did any rarity enter 
the town, it gravitated naturally to these 
walls, to the very nail that waited to receive 
it, and where, the day after its accession, it 
seemed to have hung a lifetime." 

Lowell's home was at Elmwood, about a 
mile away from Harvard Square, and it 
was in this roomy mansion that he was 



146 I'yOYlIOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

born on Fel). 22, 1819. His father was a 
Unitarian clergyman, and he was descended 
from a long line of prosperous people 
who had originally come to America from 
Bristol, Eng. The city of Lowell was 
named after one of them, and another 
was the founder of the Lowell Institute 
in I)Oston, an educational establishment to 
which he left two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars by a will written while he was 
on the summit of the Great Pyramid. 

The house is still screened from the 
highway by the giant trees around it, 
though the jingle of the horse-cars and the 
rumble of passing carriages and carts now 
jar upon its quiet ; but when the poet was 
a boy it was in a solitude, and the only 
noises were the cries of the birds which 
thronofed the rarden. 

He was fond of birds, as the reader can 
well believe who knows an essay of his 
called " My Garden Acquaintance ; " and 
the feathered visitors who came to Elm- 
wood and gossiped in its cavernous shade 
were always treated as welcome guests. 
There were robins, catbirds, blue-jays, 



JAMES JWSSELL LOIVI-ILL. 147 

orioles, bobolinks, blackbirds, and herons. 
What could be better than Lowell's de- 
scription of the robins ? 

"They are feathered Pecksniffs, to be 
sure ; but then how brightly their breasts, 
that look rather shabby in the sunlight, 
shine in a rainy day against the dark 
green of the fringe-tree ! After they have 
pinched and shaken all the life out of an 
earth-worm, as Italian cooks pound all the 
spirit out of a steak, and then gulped him, 
they stand up in honest self-confidence, ex- 
pand their red waistcoats with the virtuous 
air of a lobby member, and outface you 
with an eye that calmly challenges inquiry, 
' Uo / look like a bird that knows the 
flavor of raw vermin ? I throw myself 
upon a jury of my peers. Ask any robin 
if he ever ate any thing less ascetic than 
the frugal berry of the juniper, and he will 
answer that his vow forbids him ! ' Can 
such an open bosom cover such depravity ? 
Alas, yes ! I have no doubt his breast was 
redder at that very moment with the blood 
of my raspberries. On the whole, he is a 
doubtful friend in the garden. He makes 



148 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

his dessert of all kinds of berries, and is 
not averse from early pears. But when 
we remember how omnivorous he is, eat- 
ing his own weight in an incredibly short 
time, and that Nature seems exhaustless 
in her inventions of new insects hostile 
to vegetation, perhaps we may reckon that 
he does more good than harm. For m)- 
own part, I would rather have his cheerful- 
ness and kind neighborhood than many 
berries." 

The birds returned the friendship of the 
inmates of the house with unwonted confi- 
dence, and would sometimes fly through 
the hall or the library. But, though the 
boy had so much interest in them, he 
never " oologized" them, and if they would 
not come near for him to observe them, he 
brought them closer with an opera-glass — 
a much better weapon, as he sa)"s, than a 
gun. 

No school can ever do as much for a 
sensitive boy as the influence and example 
of parents of scholarly tastes, with whom 
the habit of reading is as regular as eating 
or sleeping. Lowell's father was a scholar, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 149 

and his mother, as well, was a person of 
liberal culture and literary capacity, who, 
as soon as her children could read, opened 
to them the treasures of Eno-lish litera- 

o 

ture, — 

" The old melodious lays 
Which softly melt the ages through, 
The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase." 

Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Milton were 
familiar to them at an age when most chil- 
dren are still reciting nursery rhymes ; and 
in James Russell Lowell, who was the 
youngest of them, the influence of these 
masters struck with deeper roots than in 
the others, bringing forth in good time a 
fruit of its own. 

Elmwood was full of books, and they 
were not allowed to lie dusty and unused 
on the shelves. Access to them under the 
direction of as discriminatinsf a student as 
Mrs. Lowell was in itself an education ; 
but it was not deemed to be enoutrh, and 
the young poet was sent to a classical 
school in the neighborhood, where he was 
prepared for Harvard College. 



150 BOYHOOD OF F.IMOUS AUTHORS. 

What sort of a boy was lie at this tunc ? 
A letter from one of his classmates, the 
Hon. G. B. Loring, lies open before the 
writer o{ these lines : " He was a rapid 
reader, and had a keen appreciation of all 
noble thoughts, alid a deep sympathy with 
all noble characters. He learned his les- 
sons with great ease, but was not fond 
of mathematics, though he comprehended 
readily philosophical theories. He loved 
poetry, and his own faculty of versification 
was notable even then. He had decided 
political views, and was a Whig in those 
days of Whiggery and Democracy, because 
he thought the latter a pretence, and not 
the embodiment of doctrines accordant 
with the? name. He was by nature devout 
and conservative in his religious views, antl 
he was an advocate of temperance obliga- 
tions as a safeguard against temptation. 
Perhaps he did not set an example of 
intense application, but he acquired knowl- 
edge more easily than many of his tellows. 
His wit Hashed about in away which some- 
times startled the dull, and always whetted 
the vxV^n of the bright; but he was a boy 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 151 

without malice, and with strong attach- 
ments, a dutiful son, and a devoted friend. 
His tastes were simple, and free from all 
desire for display. Althoug-h at times sub- 
ject to those moods which fall upon boys 
as well as men who have sensitive natures, 
he struggled alone through his cloudy hours, 
and gave only his sunshine to his friends." 
He was a brilliant letter-writer, and his 
private correspondence was sprinkled with 
verses, many of which have never been 
published. Mr. Loring has a bundle of 
such letters from him, in which prose is 
often dropped for a cantering rhyme. In 
one, describing an early trip to the White 
Mountains, he writes : — 

" 1 suppose you remember when Time was young ; 

Say ! What made him so crabbed and cross ? 
Did he speculate largely in Eastern lands, 

Which the deluge made all a dead loss? 
Did he lose his affianced (poor soul) in the flood? 

Or write a small poem or two, 
And turn misanthropic on reading a squib 

In some acid pre-Adam Review?" 

Again, answering his friend, a student 
of medicine, who had tried his hand at a 



152 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

verse or two, as a tribute to his genius^ he 
wrote : — 

" Dear friend and true, I take your hand, 

A hand I love to clasp, 
And welcome you to Muse's land 

With warm and hearty grasp. 
Not that you need a welcome there, 

For what you wrote to me 
Would justly claim a right to wear 

The wreath of poesy. 
But I dare trust that smile of mine 

Will never come amiss, 
Although it scarce may hope to shine 

Through fog-verse such as this. 
You have more legal right than I 

To build the lofty rhyme, 
(Though when my shingle shines on high 

I may enjoy more time), 
For Esculapius was the son 

Of golden-haired Apollo, 
And if you win the heart of one, 

The other's sure to follow." 

Lowell entered Harvard in his sixteenth 
year, and he has said of himself that he 
read every thing except the text-books pre- 
scribed by the Faculty, He was graduated 
in the class of 1838, and then entered the 
Law School, intending, like Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, to become a lawyer. He even 
went so far as to open a law-office in 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 153 

Boston, but it is more than suspected that 
one of his early attempts at fiction, bearing 
the title of " My First Client," referred to 
an entirely imaginary person. "The old 
melodious lays " were still more fascinating 
to him than the law-books bound up in 
yellow sheepskin, and his circumstances 
were so easy that he was not forced to con- 
tinue work that was distasteful to him. 

He published a little book of verse, and 
when he was twenty-four he started a 
magazine ; but, though neither the book 
nor the magazine met with success, he 
soon afterwards proved that by the closing 
of the little office and Blackstone's Com- 
mentaries, literature had gained more than 
law had lost. 

Elmwood is still the home of Mr. Lowell 
when he is in the United States, and though 
many of the birds have now disappeared, 
the herons which lingered in its shade were 
made the subject of one of Longfellow's 
last poems : — 

" Warm and still is the summer night, 
As here by the river's brink I wander, 
White overhead the stars, and white 

The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder. 



154 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

" Silent are all the sounds of day ; 

Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, 
And the cry of the herons winging their way 
O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets. 

" Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass 

To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes ; 
Sing him the song of the green morass. 

And the tides that water the reeds and rushes. 



" Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate. 

Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting, 
Some one hath lingered to meditate, 

And send him unseen this friendly greeting ; 

•'That many another hath done the same. 

Though not by a sound was the silence broken : 
The surest pledge of a deathless name 

Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken." 



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IIJALMAR JIJORTJI BOVESEN. J 55 



HJALMAR TTJORTII BOYESRN. 

Ix a ca[)ital story l)y Hjalmar Hjorth 
Boyesen, called " A Norseman's Pilgrim- 
age," there is a chapter headed "Retro- 
spect ; " and if any one wishes to learn 
something about the youth of the author, 
he cannot do better than read that, for I 
have good reason to know that it is auto- 
biographical. 

" Olaf Varberg was by birth a Norwegian. 
His childhood had been spent in the fjords 
of Norway, where the grand solemnity of 
nature had tended to foster a certain 
brooding disposition of mind. Every hill, 
every stone, and every tree was a monu- 
ment of past heroism, or at least to his 
wakeful sense suggested some untold 
record of the Norseman's forgotten glory. 
Not a hundred steps from his home stood 
King Bele's venerable tomb ; and on this 
very strand, where so often he had sat 



156 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUFHORS. 

pensively gazing down into the blue deep, 
it was that Frithjof landed in the summer 
nights, and hastened to those forbidden 
meetings with his beloved in Balder's 
grove ; and not very far from the house 
there was a huge birch which certainly 
must have been centuries old. It erew 
upon a green hillock which the boy fan- 
cied looked like a tomb. Here under this 
tree he had spent perhaps the happiest 
moments of his life. In the long, light 
summer evenings, he would sit there for 
hours listenino- to the strantxe, soft melo- 
dies of the wind as it breathed through the 
full-leafed crown. 

" He felt sure that it was a scald who was 
buried here ; for in the songs of the wind 
he had seemed to recognize the same 
strain that had rung in his ears so often 
while reading the scaldic lays in the old 
sagas. Then strange emotions would thrill 
through his breast ; he felt that he was 
himself a scald, and that he was destined 
to revive the expiring song and the half- 
forgotten traditions of the great old time. 

" When he was twelve years old he had 



HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN. 157 

himself written a long poem which he had 
entitled ' The Sac^a of the Scald.' He had 
only ventured to read it to his grandmother ; 
but she had cried over it for a whole day, 
and that he felt to be a great reward." 

Although all this is said of Olaf V^arberg, 
the fictitious character, it is true of Hjal- 
mar Hjorth Boyesen, as is much more in 
the same chapter ; though his father was 
not killed in the war, but is still alive. 

Mr. Boyesen was born on Sept. 23, 
1848, at Fredricksvern, a small seaport on 
the southern coast of Norway. " Why 
cannot the Scandinavian Peninsula sail ? " 
is an old conundrum ; to which the answer 
is, " Because it was launched with the keel 
up." A huge granite ridge runs north and 
south, separating Norway from Sweden, 
with ribs of rock springing from it like the 
ribs of a ship. The sea flows in between 
the ribs, and the gulfs and bays- thus shut 
in by the mountains are the fjords, amid 
the majestic scenery of which the boyhood 
of Mr. Boyesen was passed. 

" How often," he says, " have I drifted 
through the spacious summer days in my 



158 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

sharp-keeled wherry, upon those hght, glit- 
tering waters, while the seablrds surged in 
airy waves above me, and the white clouds 
with a bewildering distinctness pursued 
their tranquil paths far down in the deep 
below ! It gave one a feeling of being 
suspended in the midst of the vast blue 
space, hovering between two infinities; and 
it seemed at the moment often hard to 
determine whether the real heavens were 
above or below. Then to watch the sub- 
tile play of color, how the lucid green vies 
with the feebler air-tints ; to listen with 
luxurious listlessness to the musical plash- 
ing of the water against the bow ; to follow 
the placid soaring of the large, white- 
breasted sea-gulls, as they float on broad, 
motionless wings, through the viewless 
ether ; and to feel all the while the vast 
presence of the heaven-piercing peaks and 
o^laciers, like a huee, dim backo-round, 
upon which your sensations trace them- 
selves in a deliciously vague and rich 
relief, — ah! it is the perfection of pure 
and simple being, one of those moments 
when the mere fact of living seems a great 
and Horious thino-." 



HJALMAR HJORTH BO YES EN. I 59 

" I remember how as a boy my whole 
being thrilled with the proud consciousness 
that I was a Norseman, a Goth of the pure 
old stock, a descendant of those daring- 
V^iking-s who conquered Normandy and 
England, and who spread the terror of their 
name even to Italy and Constantinople." 

His mother died while he was still young, 
and he was brought up by her father, Judge 
Hjorth of Systrand. His most pronounced 
trait at this period was his love of animals: 
he had several hundred pigeons, and be- 
sides these a lot of rabbits, dogs, cows, and 
even horses. All his pigeons were named 
after characters in the books he read, both 
historic and fictitious ; and in his imagina- 
tion they repeated the adventures ascribed 
to the originals. 

There was an old tenant on the estate, 
named Gunnar, who took a great fancy to 
the boy, and initiated him into all the mys- 
teries of wood-craft. He knew every sight 
and sound in the woods, and what they 
meant. Sometimes the boy spent entire 
nights with him in the woods, sleeping in 
the mountain chalets or " saeters," in order 



l6o BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

to be In time for the birds and beasts that 
came to drink at the springs and lakes in 
the mornings. As aresuk, his senses were 
as alert as those of an Indian, and he was 
a good shot and an expert fisherman. 
Signs of the weather, the proper season of 
the year and time of day for all kinds 
of game, the best way of making flies for 
trout, — such things as these were quite 
familiar to the boy, who wandered through 
the forests of spruce, fir, birch, and hem- 
lock, on the steep slopes of the fjords, with 
old Gunnar. 

" I assure you," said Mr. Boyesen to me 
one day, " that I have never since had so 
keen an enjoyment of life as I had then. 
I need only shut my eyes to see the clear 
mountain tarns at sunrise, where the fish 
leaped in the sun, or the dark rivers at 
nis'ht where we went trout-fishino-, and the 
great splashes in the stream as the line 
flew off the reel. By the way, have you 
ever sat through the night at a lonely 
river, and seen the otter go a-fishing ? He 
plumps so quietly into the stream, and you 
see nothing but perhaps a little black 



HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN. l6l 

moving speck, and the gleam of his eyes, 
and his lono- whiskers." 

It was a rule in Judge Hjorth's house, 
that the children should cro to bed at nine 
o'clock ; but the servants' hall had an irre- 
sistible attraction for Hjalmar (whose name, 
and many other Norse names, will not be 
so difficult to pronounce, by the way, if the 
reader will remember that they is sounded 
like the y in "yacht" and "Yankee.") 
Hjalmar loved to sit up, and listen to the 
rough peasant dialect of the servants as 
they sang ballads, and told stories of trolls 
and brownies, and the achievements of 
their ancestors. In spite of all prohibitions 
he could not keep away from this enchant- 
ed world ; and he confesses that often after 
having kissed his grandfather and grand- 
mother " good night," he would steal down 
into the kitchen, and sit spell-bound, gaz- 
ing and listening, until his disobedience was 
discovered, and he was ignominiously un- 
dressed and put to bed. 

The day came for him to leave home to 
go to school in the city, but when his trunk 
had been packed, and the steamer was due, 



l62 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

he could not be found. Messenorers were 
sent hither and thither ; they searched 
every nook and corner, and shouted his 
name, without gettinor any answer. The 
household was distracted. The steamer 
loomed up in the fjord, and slowly came to 
the landing. Still the boy did not return. 
He had been seen in the morning, on the 
pier, and boats were sent out with dragnets 
to search for him in the water. There was 
no trace of him there. At last one of the 
dairymaids suggested that he might have 
gone to the pasture where the calves were 
kept, to say good-by to the cattle ; and there, 
sure enough, he was discovered, with his 
arms around the neck of a calf, over which 
he was weeping bitter tears. He had 
started out to say farewell to all his pets 
on the estate, and had been so overcome 
with grief at having to leave this particular 
calf, which had been given to him, that he 
had forgotten all about the steamer, which 
lay shrieking impatiently, and belching 
forth smoke, in the fjord. 

His incurable homesickness made his 
school life miserable, although he was 



HJALMAR }{JORTH BOYESEN. 163 

amply able to hold his own with the other 
boys, who had a great respect for his 
knowledge of fishing and hunting and all 
those thinors that he had learned in his 
excursions with Gunnar. Those excur- 
sions, with all their sic{hts and sounds, — 
the rainbow flicker of the trout, the ripples 
in the otter's wake, the music of the water- 
falls, the calm twilight of the woods, the 
scent of the pines, — came back to him 
now in such vivid sensations that he could 
not apply himself to his books ; but he had 
so much natural aptitude, that, though he 
rarely took up a lesson until it was within 
a few minutes of the time to recite it, he 
managed to keep about the middle of his 
class, and occasionally advanced towards the 
top on account of the literary ability of his 
compositions. These were the only exer- 
cises that interested him in the befilnninor 
but the praise he received for them gradu- 
ally aroused his ambition in other direc- 
tions. 

He was a plucky boy, and was not with- 
out some " noble scars." There was a 
feud of ancient standing between the boys 



1 64 JIOVJJOOI) OF FAMOUS Al'TlloRS. 

of tlu^ Lalin School' and those wlio did not 
rejoice in a classical education, and a Latin- 
School boy who ventured upon hostile 
territory was sure to be pounced upon by 
the " plebs" and unmercifully beaten it he 
was not abk; to defend himself. Boyesen 
had no f("ar of th(-s(! (encounters, and often 
souf£ht them, thoutj-h he was now and then 
routed in the fortunes of war, 

Durinir the summer vacations he re- 
turiK^l to his ])eautiful home on the 
Sognefjord, making the journey <:)W foot, — 
a distance of nearly two hundred miles, — 
with a knapsack on his back, at a season 
of the year when the country w^as at its 
loveliest ; and thus he was enabled to re- 
new his acquaintance with peasant life, 
and to listen again to the legends that had 
charm(;d him in the servants' hall. 

lie did not like city life, or the ancient 
languages which he had to learn at school; 
arK.1 he sought relief in his compositions. 
He wrote the most blood-curdling trage- 
dies and romances ; and like Olaf Varberg, 
th(i hero of "A Norseman's Pilgrimage," 
he found an aj)preciati\'e listener in his 



HJALMAR HJORTH BO YES EN. 165 

grandmother. After seeing " Hamlet" for 
the first time at the Christiania Theatre, 
he wrote a play in which the hero was 
killed in the first act and re-appeared as a 
ghost in the remaining four acts: even thus 
did his juvenile imagination parody Shak- 
speare's greatest work! But his talent was 
genuine, and only needed direction and 
development to rise above such imitative 
efforts as these ; though the only encour- 
agement he received was from his grand- 
mother. 

" Norway is too small a country to 
support poets," his father said. " If you 
are serious in your aspirations to become 
a man of letters," he added, " you ought 
to conquer a language in which you can 
address the great world, — English, French, 
or German, — that is, if you have any thing 
to say which the world will care to listen 
to." 

His father had a restless and ambitious 
spirit, which rebelled against the slow and 
conservative methods of Norway. He had 
been to America, and he liked this country 
better than his own, and thouc{ht that it 



1 66 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

would be well for his sons if they would 
come here. He had even deposited a sum 
of money with a friend in Chicag-o, which 
was to be paid to any one of his sons who 
should appear to claim it in person. 

Hjalmar himself was as eager to try his 
fortunes in the new country as his father 
was to have him ; but Judge Hjorth vio- 
lently opposed the idea at first, though after- 
wards, when the boy had taken his degree 
at the university, the old gentleman yielded 
to his persuasions. This was in 1868, when 
Hjalmar was only twenty years old ; and 
thouo-h his intention on startinof out was to 
return to Norway in a year, he found the 
United States so attractive that he made 
this country his home. 

For a time he was employed in editing 
a Scandinavian paper ; then he became a 
teacher ; and he acquired the language so 
rapidly, that at the end of two years he was 
able to write a book which is a model of 
racy and vigorous English. He was not 
without homesickness, and it was natural 
that in composing this book his thoughts 
should go back to the deep, mountain- 



HJALMAR HJORTH BO YES EN. 1 67 

clasped fjords, and the high valleys, shel- 
tered in which he had so often sat before 
the peasant's fire listening to the legends 
of the wonderful North-land. Gunnar came 
back to his mind, and he gave that name to 
his hero, thouo;h the latter had not at all 
the character of the old woodman. 

The originality and power of the book 
were recoofnized at once: it was full of life 
and motion, and gave one the sensation of 
walking side by side with a vigorous com- 
panion, across some clear upland on an ex- 
hilarating autumn morning. Here was an 
author who had new stories to tell, and 
who could tell them so well that the pulse 
of the listener bounded in unison with his, 
in watching the movements of his charac- 
ters. Norway had given America a new 
novelist. 

Since then Mr. Boyesen has fortified his 
position in literature by many delightful 
books, all glowing with nervous vitality and 
sparkling like the water in his native cas- 
cades. So many of them are there, that 
an ordinary writer might point to them 
alone in proof of his industry; but their 



1 68 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

production has been merely a recreation 
to him, and the greater part of his time is 
given to the duties of a professorship in 
Columbia College, New York. 

How"Gunnar" found a publisher, he 
has told us as follows : — 

"One day in July, 1871, I happened to be in the 
Harvard College Library, Cambridge. Professor Ezra 
Abbot, who was then assistant librarian, begged me to 
write my name in the visitors' book. He became in- 
terested in it, philologically. He asked about my 
nationality, and, hearing that I was a Norseman, 
begged leave to make me acquainted with Professor 
Child, who just then was in need of a Norseman. 

" Professor Child was sent for and arrived. He gave 
me Landstadt's collection of Norwegian ballads, and 
begged me read and translate a number of passages 
which he had marked. He was then at work upon his 
great book on ballads, two volumes of which have now 
appeared. We spent the whole afternoon reading 
Norse ballads written in different dialects which were 
all familiar to me. 

" When we parted, Professor Child exclaimed, ' You 
have a lot of valuable material in your possession. 
Why don't you make use of it? It would make an 
interesting article.' 

" I replied that I had written something. He 
begged me to bring the MS. to him, and a few days 
later I was invited to dine at his house. Howells was 



HJALMAR HJORTH BO YES EN. 169 

among the guests ; he was then editor of ' The Atlantic' 
After dinner I was requested to read a portion of my 
MS. ; and I selected the chapter on the ' Skee Race,' 
and, being asked for more, read the chapter entitled 
'The Wedding of the Wild Duck.' 

" Howells became greatly interested ; begged me to 
spend a couple of days at his house as his guest, and 
read the rest of the tale. This invitation was accepted, 
and likewise the MS. 

" It was this incident which had the most decisive 
influence upon my life, as it was probably the cause 
of my remaining in this country. I then became 
acquainted with Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Lowell, Henry 
James, Jr., and others. It changed the face of the 
United States to me, and launched me fairly upon my 
career as a man of letters." 



I70 llOYIIOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



THOMAS WENTWORrn IIIGGINSON. 

Till'! quaint old village, with its strag- 
gling houses, and deep shade and quiet- 
ude, which Lowell pictures for us as the 
Cambridge of his youth, was the scene 
of the boyhood of Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson also ; and he too, though four 
years the junior of Lowell, was among the 
eager boys who buzzed around the door of 
the wonderful barber's shop, described in 
" Fireside Travels," where tomahawks and 
weapons from the antipodes hung upon 
the wall, and a parrot harangued the spec- 
tators and the customers in a gibberish 
which the barber said was the Hottentot 
lanofuaq^e. 

He went to the same school as Lowell, 
and sat under the same frowning eye, 
though the; poet, who, as he says, seemed 
" immeasiu'ably ancient," had been trans- 
ferred to colleo'e ; and his earliest recollec- 



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THOMAS WEXTIVORTH HIGGINSON. lyi 

tions are of the library in the gambrel- roofed 
house where OHver Wendell Holmes was 
born, and where he was as much at home 
as in his father's house, which adjoined 
that celebrated dwelling. 

He was born in an atmosphere of learn- 
inor and literature ; the walls of the house 
seemed to be made of books, and when he 
looked out of the windows, the college 
buildings were visible to remind him of 
further learning still. If ever a boy could 
claim to belong to the " academic races," 
as Dr. Holmes calls the families whose 
names have appeared generation after 
generation on the college rolls, it was 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who came 
of a long line of Puritanic clergymen and 
scholars, and who was himself born at the 
head of a street called Professors' Row 
(now Kirkland Street) because all the 
houses were occupied by professors in the 
neighboring university, of which his own 
father was the steward or bursar. The 
society in which his parents moved was 
intellectual, and many of their visitors were 
famous, like Edward Everett the orator, 



1/2 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

Judge Story, and Margaret Fuller. Even 
his nurse added something to the influence 
of the literary current into which he was 
plunged, for she was Rowena Pratt, the 
wife of the oriofinal of Lon2:fellow's " Vil- 
lage Blacksmith." 

It would have been easy to make such 
surroundings odious to a boy, for a diet of 
learning alone is quite as likely to excite 
repugnance as a diet of pudding. Books 
may be as darkening as prison-bars, and 
they may be as full of sunlight and en- 
chanting hues as windows filled with cathe- 
dral glass ; the difference depends partly 
on the boy himself, and partly on the 
manner in which he is educated. Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson was a born scholar, 
however, and in the reminiscences of his 
youth, books are not associated with con- 
finement and restraint, but with pleasures 
as keen as any he found in the play- 
ground ; he never sighed to escape from 
them, but derived from them all the de- 
lights which they possess for the boy who 
loves them. Even his Latin text-book 
had charms for him, as he has shown us 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 173 

in one of his many graceful essa^-s. " I 
remember the very day when the school- 
master gave it to me," he says. " He 
was that vigorous, rigorous, kind-hearted, 
thorough - bred Englishman, W. W. It 
was the beginning of a new school-year. 
Lowell, and Story, and the other old boys, 
who seemed so immeasurably ancient, had 
been transferred to college, and last year's 
youngest class was at length youngest but 
one, and ready for the ' New Latin Tutor.' 
Then W. W. called us to his desk, and 
opening it, — I can hear the very rattle of 
the birch, as it rolled back from the up- 
lifted lid, — he brought out for us these 
books, in all the glory of fresh calf binding, 
and gave each volume into trembling boy- 
ish hands. To some of us there was more 
of birch than of bounty in the immediate 
associations of that desk ; and I fancy that 
we always trembled a little when we had a 
new book, as if all the proverbial floggings 
which it might involve were already tin- 
gling between its covers. Yet those of us 
whose love of the book was wont to save 
us from the rod, ma}^ have felt the thrill of 



1/4 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

delight predominate ; at any rate, there was 
novelty, and the 'joy of eventful living,' 
and I remember that the rather stern and 
aquiline face of our teacher relaxed into 
mildness for a moment. But we and our 
books must have looked very fresh and 
new to him, though we may all be a little 
battered now ; at least, my ' New Latin 
Tutor ' is. The change undergone by the 
volume which Browning put in the plum- 
tree cleft, to be read only by newts and 
beetles, — 

" With all the binding all of a blister, 
And great blue spots where the ink has run, 
And reddish streaks that wink and glister," — 

could hardly exceed what this book shows, 
when I fish it up from a chest of literary 
lumber coeval with itself. It would smell 
musty, doubtless, to any nose unregulated 
by a heart ; but to me it is redolent of 
the alder-blossoms of boyish springs, and 
the aromatic walnut odor which used in 
autumn to pervade the dells of ' Sweet 
Auburn,' that lay not so very far from our 
schoolhouse. It is a very precious book, 



THOMAS WENTIVORTH HICGINSON. 175 

and it should be robed in choice Turkey 
morocco, were not the very covers too 
much a part of the association to be 
changed. For between them I gathered 
the seed-grain of many harvests of deHght ; 
through this low archway I first looked 
upon the immeasurable beauty of words." 

In his own house there was a library rich 
in the literature of the age of Queen Anne ; 
and when he was tired of reading himself, 
his mother read to him, while he stretched 
himself out on the hearth-rug and gazed 
into the fire. The library in the minister's 
house next door was open to him also, — 
that fascinating place which the " Autocrat 
of the Breakfast Table " (then a student of 
medicine) has described for us in both prose 
and verse ; the old gambrel-roofed house, 
with the picture of Dorothy O., and the 
marks of the redcoats' muskets on the floor. 

The father of the "Autocrat" was fond 
of his neighbor's children, as well as of his 
own, and, without a murmur of complaint, 
allowed them to romp in his library among 
the books, which were as varied in their 
uniforms as the members of the Ancient 



1/6 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

and Honorable Artillery Company. Once, 
when the weather was cold, he joined them 
at the window where they stood admiring 
the traceries of frost on the panes; and. 
seeing the twinkling points of light among 
the crystals, he wrote underneath a motto 
wdiich remained with them as though the 
w^ords had been cut in their memories 
rather than in the vanishing frost, — Per 
aspera ad astra, — which they all knew 
meant " Through difficulties to the stars." 

Though a bookish boy, Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson was as vigorous as any 
dunce ; but he was precocious, and though 
only thirteen years of age when he entered 
Harvard College, he looked much older. 
The studiousness of his earlier years was 
not abated now, and at a time when most 
boys are only freshmen, or at preparatory 
schools, he was graduated. Curiously 
enoueh he was fond of mathematics, which 
are usually the aversion of students of liter- 
ary tastes ; but literature had the greatest 
charm for him, and during his college years 
a group of new authors came into promi- 
nence who had a lifelong influence upon 



THOMAS WEXTWORTH HIGGIXSOX. 1 77 

him as upon the rest of the world. " Ten- 
nyson's thin early volumes were being 
handed about, and seemed to bring a richer 
coloring into the universe ; Carlyle was 
talked of in the evening by my elder broth- 
ers ; and one day the fresh wit and wisdom 
of • Pickwick ' came to delight us all. . . . 
Emerson had often lectured at Cambridge, 
and his volume of essays had just appeared. 
Tnis was given to me by my mother, and was 
read as I never had read any other book." 

After his graduation, the young student 
said that he would like to be a black- 
smith, — thinking that by working at the 
forore and anvil he could learn how to 
sympathize with that great division of man- 
kind which such as he usually know only 
through books ; but he was dissuaded from 
this, and became a teacher, a preacher, and 
an author. Perhaps it is as an author that 
he is most distinguished now, but we ought 
not to forget, in enumerating his accom- 
plishments, that " Colonel" is not a brevet 
honor in his case, and that it was honorably 
acquired in the Civil War when he com- 
manded a black reo-iment. 



178 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

" One of the best things in the world is 
to be a boy. It requires no experience, 
though it needs some practice to be a good 
one. The disadvantage of the position is 
that it does not last long enough ; it is 
soon over. Just as soon as you get used 
to being a boy, you have to be something 
else, with a good deal more work to do, 
and not half so much fun." 

This is said by Charles Dudley Warner, 
in a delightful little volume called " Being 
a Boy," the copy of which that lies before 
me, borrowed from the public library, bears 
on its titlepage the pencilled comments of 
two previous readers, in schoolboy hand : 
" Putty gud book," " Rawther Sawcastick." 

It is a " putty gud book," and it is " raw- 
ther sawcastick ; " it leaves nothing unsaid 
that is worth knowing about the life of a 
boy on a New-England farm, and it is as 



^u^^ cZ^ A-^ ^^ >--< '^--^ 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARMCR. 1 79 

natural and as shyly humorous as Aldrich's 
history of Tom Bailey at Rivermouth. 
No doubt those who have read it, or who 
may read it in the future, will be glad to 
know that it is in a measure autobiograph- 
ical ; that in writing it, Mr. Warner sat for 
his own portrait, and painted what he saw 
in the lookinp-'Mass. 

He was born on Sept. 12, 1827, in 
Plainfield, Mass., a hilly town in the west- 
ern part of the State, where his father had 
a farm of about six hundred acres, with 
large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle ; 
and his boyhood was like that of the typ- 
ical farmer's boy who appears in his book, 
thouQfh in his case the labor and the trials 
were sweetened by a love of Nature, which 
gathered something more than pliysical 
enjoyment from his surroundings. 

The summer soon passed away, and the 
winters seemed to be never-ending on that 
lofty plateau. The snows drifted high 
above the fences, and sleighs could go any- 
where over the fields. The winds blew 
strong ; and once, when Charles Dudley 
Warner started across the solid shining 



l8o BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

crust of the snow for the schoolhouse that 
was about half a mile away, with his din- 
ner-basket in his hand, and a red cloak 
drawn around him, the tempest reversed 
the fable, and snatched both basket and 
cloak away from him, carrying them off 
into the forest, where they were not recov- 
ered until the following spring. 

He hated cold, and says now that the 
so-called inviororatinof climate of New Eno-- 
land fills the graveyard with young tenants ; 
but sometimes he could forget it, as when, 
having an apple to eat, he came home from 
school on a bitter day without noticing that 
the flaps of his cap were loose, and that 
his ears were frozen. 

The house was an old-fashioned place, 
with rambling woodsheds and out-buildings, 
and a big kitchen. There were no stoves, 
but great cavernous fireplaces, hedged in 
by settles, the backs of which protected 
the family from draughts when they sat be- 
fore the blazing fire. One curious article 
of furniture was a round table with a seat 
under it, and when the top was swung back 
it formed another settle. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. i8r 

A glorious place this kitchen was on a 
winter's evening. Stories were told, and 
songs sung, and it was the scene of Whit- 
tier's " Snow-bound " over again. 

" Between the andiron's straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And close at hand the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood." 

And in addition to the cider, the nuts, and 
the apples, there were dishes of toasted 
cheese of a particular kind called " white 
oak," which was made from skimmed milk, 
and which would toast without melting. An 
enormous cellar was underneath the kitchen, 
full of cider-barrels, vegetables, and apples, 
which grew in abundance on the farm. 

The principal events of the year were 
the cider-making in the fall, and the sugar- 
making in the spring. There were fine 
groves of sugar-maples on the farm ; and 
in March or April, when the skies began 
to have a soft look and the steely light of 
winter to grow more like gold, when there 
was a constant drip, drip, drip, from the 



1 82 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

eaves, and the elbows of the rocks showed 
through the white garment that was shp- 
ping away from them, the trees were 
tapped, and the buckets hung from them 
to catch the oozing sap. A camp was 
estabHshed in the woods, and all the family 
would be there for the " suofarinof-off," 
which was clone in the primitive way, with 
a biof fire between two loQfs and the cal- 
drons hung from a pole above. They 
make sugar now in brick houses, with 
elaborate apparatus ; but, though the prod- 
uct is said to be improved, it is not half 
as sweet as it was at the old-fashioned 
" sugaring-off " with the logs blazing in 
the woods and the merry-making of former 
days, — the days of fifty years ago when 
Charles Dudley Warner was a boy. 

Of course he knew somethino- about 
traps, and trapping too ; and he was 
devoted to the " hired man " who taught 
him how to make and use various kinds 
of snares. He used to go to bed and get 
up with this man, and help him to build 
the great fire, first raking the embers and 
then piling the sticks high up : it used to 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARXER. 1 83 

take a quarter of a cord of wood to build 
that fire. 

Oh tlie winters, the everlasting winters ! 
Often the snow would be heaped up in 
drifts higher than the windows, and a perma- 
nent tunnel had to be made from the house 
to the barn. The cellar was as dark as mid- 
nio-ht, for tan-bark was banked all around 
the house to kee'p out the besieging cold. 

Occasionally his father took him on 
journeys : once to the Connecticut River, 
and he craned his neck out of the window 
to see Suofar Loaf Mountain. It was in 
vain, for all the hills were more or less 
round and green, and there was not one 
that looked at all like the conical loaf of 
sugar which they had at home. And then 
his grandfather took him to the city, not 
New York City, or Boston, or any large 
city, but to Hudson ; which, small as it 
was, struck him as no other place has ever 
done since. The fruit-stalls are remem- 
bered more vividly than any thing else, 
and a man at one of the stalls offered to 
trade an orange for all the buttons on his 
coat ; he was afraid of that man. 



1 84 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

Though active, he was an imaginative 
and a dreamy boy, and his fancy trans- 
formed the common sights of the woods 
and fields to objects of chivalry and 
romance as he leaped from rock to rock 
in the high pastures ; he was not afraid of 
being alone, though there seemed to be 
strange voices in the trees. 

When he was five years old he lost his 
father, who, though not a college-bred 
man, was fond of reading, and owned the 
largest library in the town excepting the 
minister's ; and then he was sent to live 
with a relative at Charlemont, nine miles 
from Plainfield, where he attended the 
district school. It is Charlemont that is 
described in " Being a Boy." 

He was a pretty fair scholar, but the 
" chores " took most of his time, and 
books were scarce. Had he been able to 
choose, he would have entered on a mil- 
itary career. But when he was about 
twelve he went to live at Cazenovia, N.Y., 
and there his literary tastes were encour- 
aged by access to the books for which he 
had been starving. He was a clever hand 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 185 

at cumposition, and took Washinfrton Irvini^ 
as a model. His guardian intended him 
for trade, however; and for a time he was 
employed in a drug--shop, and then in the 
post-office. Afterwards he entered Hamil- 
ton Colleore, from which he was graduated 
in 1 85 1. He filled reams of paper with 
rhymes, essays, and romances, and was 
always active in the debating society. But 
he had no idea of becoming a professional 
author. Having given up his military 
aspirations, he turned his eyes towards 
public life ; speech-making seemed to be 
a great accomplishment, and a Congress- 
man a star of considerable magnitude. 
This dream of glory was not fulfilled ; his 
health was poor after his graduation, and 
in order to restore it he went to Missouri 
with a party of surveyors. After this 
adventure he studied law, and practised 
a little in Chicago ; but at last (though 
not until he was thirty-one) he took 
up journalism as a profession, and event- 
ually, like Howells and Stedman, branched 
out in the direction of more permanent 
literature. 



1 86 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

His books sometimes remind iis of 
Holmes by their philosophical playfulness ; 
of Lamb by the quaintness of their humor ; 
of Irving by their placidity ; and of Steele 
or Addison by the purity of their style. 
They have a surface of smiles, but under 
the smiles are the deep thoughts of an 
earnest nature. 









A^tv"»'w*^ 



V'^U'v^^ V^ \\^(l>WV^'ivr . 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 1 8/ 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 

If there is any boy who has not yet read 
" Treasure Island " and '' Kidnapped," he 
may be pitied in one sense and envied in* 
another sense ; for though he has lost much, 
he has much to gain, — he has joys be- 
fore him which others have already known. 
Of all modern books that a boy should 
rejoice in, there is none comparable with 
those two, both of them equal in a way to 
"Robinson Crusoe," and both, like Defoe's 
masterpiece, so permanent as works of art 
that they can never be outgrown. 

A boy who cares for reading at all 
usually reads everything he can reach ; but 
if he is a healthy boy, and has any choice, 
he soon shows his preference for romance. 
He will give up Bunyan for Scott, Miss 
Edgeworth for Marr3-at, and a bushel of 
moral tales for a handful of stirring adven- 
tures. 



1 88 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

Through the magic of a hint of a bucca- 
neer, such a boy will snap his teeth upon 
an imaginary cutlass, and slap his hip in 
search of an unsubstantial pistol ; see him- 
self (much larger than life) parading coral 
beaches, or lolling under crimson sails in 
the midday heat of tropical reefs, or under 
the mild light of the southern stars, — a 
fire-eater, a dare-devil, an exploiter of un- 
told riches ; in turn, a Drake, a Frobisher, 
or a Magellan. 

But let him return to the mass of such 
fiction when he has grown older, and the 
sadness of experience has clipped his 
wings, as it were. What rubbish most of 
it seems ; and how he will yawn over the 
narratives that once transported him, now 
to the ice-bound ship in the clutch of the 
Arctic, then to the pampas, now to the 
African lakes, and then to the Indian jun- 
gle ! The lights have Qrone out on that 
wonderful panorama in which icebergs, 
palms, and banyans had life and move- 
ment, and all the beasts of the ark swung 
in a fascinatinof rotation. 

But thouirh other books fade, "Robin- 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVE A'SOX. 1 89 

son Crusoe " keeps as fresh as ever for the 
boys of these days as it was for the boys 
who saw Defoe in Fleet Street when 
Wilham the Third was king ; and not for 
boys alone, but also for graybeards. 

So it is with Stevenson's stories of ad- 
venture. One can never be too old to lose 
interest in David Balfour or Alan Breck 
Stewart, and never fail to smell the heather 
and the brine in all their exciting experi- 
ences by sea and by land. 

Defoe wrote other books besides " Rob- 
inson Crusoe," and was the author of some 
virulent pamphlets which led him to the 
pillory ; but how many boys think of him 
except for that one^story ? Stevenson has 
written essays and poems which show his 
genius as clearly as his fiction ; but there 
is a possibility that posterity will remember 
him more gratefully for "Treasure Island" 
and " Kidnapped " than for anything else. 

He was not at all shy in describing him- 
self. Indeed, few authors of equal rank 
and permanence ever confided so much as 
he did to his readers. He held himself up 
as a mirror in which they might see them- 



1 90 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

selves ; he lets us into all his little secrets, 
and yet discloses nothing ig-noble, nothing 
that does not create s}'mpathy, and amuse 
or elevate. By reading his " Memories 
and Portraits," one might take the story 
of his youth from his own lips, as it were, 
and that revelation only needs the confir- 
mation of a few friends, which it already 
has. 

He was born in Edinburgh in 1850, and 
came of a family distinguished as inven- 
tors and eno-ineers. Mariners, who sail the 
stormy and rock-bound seas of Scotland, 
have reason to be grateful to the Steven- 
sons; for the grandfather, father, and uncles 
of Robert Louis designed and superin- 
tended the erection of the lighthouses that 
now beam on many of the most fearsome 
reefs and headlands on the coast. Robert 
himself was intended by his parents to be 
an engineer, and to pursue the family call- 
ing; but he was not that sort of a boy. He 
could not learn by rote what other boys 
learnt ; he was delicate, dreamy, unprac- 
tical — a reader, but not a scholar. 

There is very little doubt that he caused 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. IQI 

his father and mother much anxiety and 
some disappointment. " From my earliest 
childhood," he says, " it was mine to make 
a plaything of imaginary events ; and as 
soon as I was able to write I became a 
good friend to the paper-makers." He 
scribbled and read a <yreat deal, and, in- 
stead of going to school, explored the hills 
and glens of the Pentlands, until there was 
hardly a rivulet that he did not know, from 
its source to the sea ; and in all his rambles 
one may be sure his mind was full of the 
imaginings which are fed by the romantic 
past and aspect of such a country as Scot- 
land. " A Scottish child," he says, " hears 
much of shipwreck, outlying iron skerries, 
pitiless breakers, and great sea-lights ; 
much of heathery mountains, wild clans, 
and hunted Covenanters. Breaths come 
to him in song of the distant Cheviots, and 
the ring of foraying hoofs. He glories in 
his hard-fisted forefathers, of the iron girdle 
and the handful of oatmeal, who rode so 
swiftly and lived so sparsely on their raids." 
Sometimes he was taken by his father or 
his uncles on their expeditions to the wild 



192 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

islands and headlands where they were 
building lighthouses ; and thus he made the 
acquaintance of the island of Earraid, on 
which David Balfour was wrecked in the 
briof " Covenant." 

" Fifteen miles away to seaward a certain 
black rock stood environed by the Atlantic 
rollers, the outpost of the Torran reefs. 
Here was a tower to be built, and a star 
lio^hted for the conduct of seamen. But as 
the rock was small, and hard of access, and 
far from the land, the work would be one 
of years ; and my father was now looking 
for a shore station where the stones might 
be quarried and dressed, the men live, 
and the tender, with some degree of safety, 
lie at anchor. . . . Here was no livino- 
presence save for the limpets on the rocks, 
for some old, gray, rain-beaten ram that I 
might rouse out of a ferny den betwixt 
two bowlders, or for the haunting and 
piping of the gulls. It was older than 
man ; it was found so by incoming Celts 
and seafaring Norsemen and Columba's 
priests. The earthy savor of the bog- 
plants ; the rude disorder of the bowlders ; 



EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 1 93 

the inimitable seaside brightness of the 
air, the brine, and the iodine ; the lap of 
the billows among the weedy reefs ; the 
sudden springing-iip of a great run of 
dashing surf along the sea-front of the isle, 
— all that I saw and felt my predecessors 
must have seen and felt with scarce a dif- 
ference." 

To say that he was idle is less true than 
to say that he revolted against discipline 
and ordinary lessons, though we find him 
frequently bewailing his own indolence. 
He describes himself as being, when he 
entered the University, a " lean, idle, un- 
popular student . . . whose changing hu- 
mors, fine occasional purposes of good, 
flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on 
wet, east-windy, morning journeys up to 
class, infinite yawnings during lecture, and 
unquenchable gusto in the delights of tru- 
ancy, made up the sunshine and shadow 
of colleofe life." 

When he presented himself for a certifi- 
cate in the engineering class. Professor 
Fleming Jenkin, whose life he afterwards 
wrote, said, " It is quite useless for yoii, 



194 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

to come, Mr. Stevenson. There may be 
doubtful cases : there is no doubt about 
yours. You have simply not attended my 
class." 

He was odd in dress, and odd in manner. 
A friend (Miss Eva Blantyre Simpson) who 
knew him in his college days says, "He 
wore the same dress on all occasions, — 
a shabby, short, velveteen jacket, a loose, 
Byronic-collared shirt, and meagre, shabby- 
looking trousers. His straight hair he 
wore long ; and he looked like an unsuc- 
cessful artist, or a poorly clad but eager 
student. 

" We teased him unmercifully for his 
peculiarities in dress and manner," says 
Miss Simpson. " It did not become a 
youth of his years, we held, to affect a 
bizarre style ; and he held he lived in a free 
country, and could exercise his own taste 
at will. Nothing annoyed him more than 
to affirm his shabby clothes, his long cloak, 
which he wore instead of an orthodox great- 
coat, were eccentricities of genius. He 
certainly liked to be noticed, for he was 
full of the self-absorbed conceit of youth. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 195 

If he was not the central figure, he took 
what we cahed Stevensonian ways of at- 
tracting notice to himself. He would 
spring U23 full of a novel notion he had 
to expound (and his brain teemed with 
them) , or he vowed he could not speak 
trammelled by a coat, and asked leave to 
talk in his shirt-sleeves. For all these 
mannerisms he had to stand a good deal 
of chaff, which he never resented, though 
he vehemently defended himself, or fell 
squashed for a brief space in a limp mass 
into a veritable back seat." 

Without thirsting for academic honors, 
he took his degree at the University, and 
in obedience to his father's wishes joined 
the Scottish bar. For some time " R. L. 
Stevenson, Advocate," was on the door- 
plate of 1 7 Heriot Row, Edinburgh ; but he 
never practised. He had no more inclina- 
tion towards law than towards enorineerino-: 
he loved the skies, he loved the moor, he 
loved to observe his fellow-men. There 
was everything in him to show to anybody 
who could understand that he was born 
for literature, and saturated with literature. 



196 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

While he was apparently dreaming by the 
rills of the Pentland Hills, he was dipping 
into Spenser's " well of En'glish undefiled." 
into the crystal springs of the best of lite- 
rature. The reader knows, of course, that 
when Spenser spoke of this " well of Eng- 
lish undefiled," he spoke of the style of 
Chaucer. In some other ways Stevenson 
reminds us of that poet. There was no 
game that had such an attraction for him 
as his books ; and there were no books that 
could keep him in-doors, and make a pedant 
of him to the exclusion of his interest in 
nature. 

An idler? When his teachers reproached 
him, and his parents had misgivings, he 
was quietly cultivating the art on which 
his mind was set, and cultivating it by a 
method which, frankly confessed by him, 
may be studied with the same advantage, 
though it has its defects, by all who hope to 
find the best expression for their thought. 

Listen to this from his essay on "A Col- 
lege Magazine." " All through my boyhood 
and youth I was known and pointed out 
for the pattern of an idler ; and yet I was 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 19/ 

always busy on my own private end, which 
was to learn to write. I kept alwa\-s two 
books in my pocket, one to read, one to 
write in. As I walked, my mind was busy 
fitting" what I saw with appropriate words ; 
when I sat by the roadside, I would either 
read, or a pencil and a penny version-book 
would be in my hand, to note down the 
features of the scene, or commemorate 
some halting" stanzas. ... It w^as not 
so much that I wished to be an author 
(though I wished that too) as I had vowed 
that I would learn to write. . . . When- 
ever I read a book or a passage that par- 
ticularly pleased me, in which a thing was 
said or an effect rendered with propriety, 
in which there was either some conspicu- 
ous force or some happy distinction in the 
style, I must sit down myself and ape that 
quality. I w^as unsuccessful, and I knew it, 
and tried again, and was again unsuccess- 
ful ! but at least, in these vain bouts I got 
some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in 
construction, and the co-ordination of parts. 
I have thus played the sedulous ape to 
Hazlitt, to Lowell, to Wordsworth, to Sir 



iqS boyhood of famous authors. 

Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, 
to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Ober- 
mann. . . . Even at the age of thirteen 
I had tried to do justice to the inhabitants 
of the famous city of Peebles in the style 
of the ' Book of Snobs.' . . . But enough 
has been said to show by what arts of im- 
personation and what puny ventriloquial 
effects I first saw my words on paper. . . . 
It was so Keats learned, and there never 
was a finer temperament for literature than 
Keats's." 

I should like to quote more of this es- 
say — not to quote it, but to reproduce it 
from beginning to end ; but there is not 
space here. Whoever desires a lesson in 
the art of writinof English can have it crra- 
tuitously in the pages of " Memories and 
Portraits." 

Enough has been said, however, to show 
that when he seemed to be idling, Steven- 
son was serving, in a quiet, undemonstrative 
way, his apprenticeship to the profession 
of literature ; and though popular recog- 
nition did not come until he was over 
thirty, when, strange to say, it was the 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 1 99 

brilliance of a story written for boys 
("Treasure Island") which opened the 
eyes of readers who had failed to see his 
genius in earlier and profounder writing, he 
lived long enough, brief as his years were, 
to find himself celebrated, and perhaps 
immortal — perhaps immortal as one who 
uses words with a sense of their true value, 
certainly immortal for a keen sense of the 
noblest things in life, and a constant aspira- 
tion towards heaven. 

He was busy to the last, brave to the 
last, gay to the last ; though his thoughts 
(not all confessed) wandered back lovingly 
from the pleasant natives and the perennial 
foliage of the tropics to the crags and gray 
mist of his native Edinburgh. Two things 
should be borne in mind about him : as a 
famous French critic said of another author, 
he put a book into a page, a page into a 
phrase, a phrase into a word, a thought 
into a sinorle imaoje. This is true of his 
work. Of his personality we may say that 
he resembled in many ways his hero, Alan 
Breck Stewart ; and like him he might have 
cried, "O man ! am I no a bonny fighter." 



200 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 



RUDYARD KIPLING. 

Very different in most respects were 
Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard 
Kipling. Unlike Stevenson, Kipling was 
gay, not moody ; active, not contempla- 
tive; vigorous, not delicate ; an enthusiast 
in all boyish games, a lover of mischief, 
and the boon companion of the rough- 
and-tumble, hard-fisted, hard-headed boys 
who filled a military school in Devonshire. 

The one thing in which they were closely 
akin was their delight in the military and 
naval prowess of their native lands, and 
their passion for the ballads and stories 
which recount the deeds of valor done by 
the great soldiers and mariners of British 
history. 

Otherwise one cannot conceive a greater 
contrast than that between the lank, over- 
grown, queerly dressed school-boy of Ed- 
inburgh, who haunted churchyards, and 



ch^ ■ y • ^^. 










RUDVARD KIPLING. 20I 

hatched melancholy thoughts in them hke 
a young Hamlet, and the small, lithe, mis- 
chievous, prankish youth, who had been 
sent back to England by his parents in 
India for education in an academy filled 
by the sons of officers in the army and 
navy, and who relished the Spartan life he 
had to lead. 

Kipling is usually reticent, very reticent, 
about himself (and in that, too, he is un- 
like his contemporary, who, as we know 
very well, poured out his confidences like 
a friendly child) ; but he has described his 
life at the school in "The Youth's Com- 
panion" in a rare chapter of autobiography, 
from which we may quote. 

The United Service College, as it was 
called, was on the shores of Bristol Chan- 
nel, near a litde place known as Westward 
Ho, so named after Rev. Charles Kingsley's 
famous story, the scene of which is laid 
in the days of Queen Elizabeth, when the 
safety of England was threatened by the 
Spanish Armada. Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir 
Richard Grenville, Admiral Hawkins, and 
Sir Francis Drake appear in the story ; and 



202 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

the reader who loves romance can imagine 
what visions of adventure must have come 
to a boy who found liimself hving amidst 
such association. 

The college " stood within two miles of 
Am)'as Leigh's house at Northam, over- 
looking the Burrouofhs and the Pebble- 
ridee, and the mouth of the Torrido^e, 
whence the ' Rose ' sailed in search of 
Don Guzman. From the front dormitory 
windows, across the long rollers of the At- 
lantic, you could see Lundy Island and the 
Shutter Rock, where the ' Santa Cathe- 
rina ' galleon cheated Amyas put of his ven- 
geance by going ashore. Inland lay the 
rich Devonshire lanes and the fat orchards ; 
and to the west the gorse and the turf 
rose and fell along the tops of the clifts 
Ml combe after combe, till you came to 
Clovelly and the Hobby and Gallantry 
Bower, and the homes of the Carews and 
the Pinecoffins, and the Devonshire people 
that were old when the Armada was new." 

A milksop, a boy without spirit, a boy 
without a vigorous constitution, could not 
have been happy in such a school, and, 



RUDYARD KIPLING. 203 

indeed, he would have been entirely out 
of place. The discipline was severe, as ex- 
ercised by the masters and by the students 
themselves, who never forgot that they 
were preparing themselves to be soldiers. 

"The school motto," says Kipling, "was, 
' Fear God, Honour the Kinor; ' and so the 
men she made went out to Boerland and 
Zululand, and India and Burma, and Cyprus 
and Hongkong, and lived or died as gen- 
tlemen and officers. 

" Even the most notorious bully, for 
whom an awful ending was prophesied, 
went to Canada, and was mixed up in 
Riel's rebellion, and came out of it with 
a fascinating reputation of having led a 
forlorn hope, and behaved like a hero. 
The first officer killed in the last Burma 
war was one of our boys, and the school 
was well pleased to think it should be so. 

"All these matters were noted by the 
older boys ; and when their fathers, the gra)-- 
whiskered colonels and generals, came 
down to see them, or the directors, who 
were K. C. B's., and had been desperate, 
hard-fiehtinof men in their time, made a 



204 BOYJIOOD OF J-AMOUS AUTHORS. 

tour of inspection, it was reported that the 
school-tone was ' healthy.' This meant 
that the boys were straining- on their 
leashes, and tliat there w^as a steady clatter 
of sino-lcsticks and clinkin^- of foils in the 
c^ymnasium at the far end of the corridor, 
where the drill-sercff^ant was barkin"" out 
the regulation cuts and guards." 

They were great swimmers, and there 
was not a single boy who could not do his 
quarter of a mile. The links at Westward 
Ho are considered amonof the best in Encj- 
land, and the boys played golf long before 
it became fashionable. 

" We were weak in cricket ; but our foot- 
ball team at its best devastated the coun- 
try from Blundell's ' — we always respected 
lihinde-ll's, because ' Great John Ridd * 
had been educated there — to Exeter, 
whose team were grown men. Yet we, 
who had been taught to play together, 
drove th(*m back over the November mud, 
back to their own goal-posts, till the ball 
was hacked througli and touched down, 

1 I51iintlcll's is the old school at Tiverton which John Ridd, 
the hero of " Lorna Doone," attended. 



RUDYARD KIPLING. 20 5 

and you could hear the long-drawn yell of 
' Schoo-<?^/ / Schoo-<?^/ / ' as far as Apple- 
dore. 

" When the enemy would not come to 
us, our team went to the enemy, and if 
victorious, would return late at night in 
a three-horse brake chanting : — 

' It's a way we have in the Army, 
It's a way we have in the Xav)-, 
It's a way that we have in the Public Schools, 
Which nobody can deny ! ' 

"Then the boys would flock to the dormi- 
tory windows, and wave towels, and join in 
the ' Hip-hip-hip-hurrah! ' of the chorus; 
and the winning team would swagger 
through the dormitories, and show the 
beautiful blue marks on their shins, and the 
little boys would be allowed to get sponges 
and hot water." 

There was a school paper ; and Kipling 
tells us of that also in his characteristic 
style : — 

" Three of the boys, who had moved up 
the school side by side for four years, and 
were allies in all thinq-s, started the notion 



206 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

as soon as they came to the dignity of a 
study of their own with a door that would 
lock. The other two told the third boy 
what to write, and held the staircase against 
invaders. 

" It was a real printed paper of eight 
pages ; and at first the printer was more 
thoroughly ignorant of type-setting, and 
the editor was more completely ignorant 
of proof-reading, than any printer and 
any editor that ever was. It was printed 
off by a gas-engine, and even the engine 
despised its work ; for one day it went 
through the floor of the shop, and crashed 

— still working furiously — into the cellar. 
"The paper came out at times and sea- 
sons ; but every time it came out there was 
sure to be trouble, because the editor was 
learning for the first time how sweet and 
good and profitable it is — and how nice it 
looks on the page — to make fun of people 
in actual print. 

" For instance, there was friction among 
the study- fags once ; and the editor wrote 
a descriptive account of the lower school, 

— the classes whence the fags were drawn, 



RUDYARD KIPLIiVG. 20J 

— their manners and customs, their ways 
of cooking half-plucked sparrows and im- 
perfectly cleaned blackbirds at the gas-jets 
on a rusty nib, and their fights over sloe- 
jam made in a gallipot. It was an abso- 
lutely truthful article ; but the lower school 
knew nothing about truth, and would not 
even consider it as literature. 

"It is less safe to write a study of an 
entire class than to discuss individuals one 
by one ; but apart from the fact that boys 
throw books and inkpots very straight in- 
deed, there Is surprisingly little difference 
between the abuse of grown-up people and 
the abuse of children. 

"In those days the editor had not 
learned this ; so when the study below the 
editorial study threw coal at the editorial 
legs, and kicked in the panels of the door, 
because of personal paragraphs in the last 
number, the editorial staff — and there 
never was so loyal and hard-fighting a 
staff — fried fat bacon till there was half 
an inch of grease in the pan, and let the 
greasy chunks down at the end of a string 
to bob against and defile the lower study 
windows. 



208 BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

"When the lower study — and there 
never was a public so low and unsympa- 
thetic as that lower study — looked out to 
see what was frosting their window-panes, 
the editorial staff emptied the hot fat on 
their heads, and it stayed there for days 
and days, wearing shiny to the very last." 

It is not avowed that Kipling was the 
editor of that paper, but I think he was. 
The incident of the bacon certainly seems 
to fit him. 

When they left school, most of the boys 
entered the army ; but for some reason not 
explained Kipling did not do so. He re- 
turned to his family in India, and became, 
at the age of nineteen, a reporter, editor, 
and war correspondent of an Anglo-Indian 
newspaper. 

The trying conditions under which his 
work was done, he himself has described : — • 

"The paper began running the last is- 
sue of the week on Saturday night, which 
is to say Sunday morning, after the custom 
of a London paper. This was a great con- 
venience ; for immediately after the paper 
was put to bed, the dawn would lower the 



RUDYARD KIPLIXG. 209 

thermometer from 96 to almost 84 for half 
an hour ; and in that chill — you have no 
idea how cold is 84 on the grass until you 
begin to pray for it — a very tired man 
could set off to sleep ere the heat aroused 
him. 

"One Saturday night it v/as my pleasant 
duty to put the paper to bed alone. A 
king or courtier or a community was go- 
ing to die, or get a new constitution, or 
do something that was important, on the 
other side of the world ; and the paper 
was to be held open till the latest possible 
minute in order to catch the teleoram. It 
was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a 
June night can be ; and the loo, the red- 
hot wind from the westward, was booming 
among the tinder-dry trees, and pretend- 
ing that the rain was on its heels. Now 
and again a spot of almost boiling water 
would fall on the dust with the flop of a 
frog, but all our weary world knew that 
was only pretence. It was a shade cooler 
in the press-room than the office ; so I sat 
there, while the type ticked and clicked, 
and the night jars hooted at the windows, 



2IO BOYHOOD OF FAMOUS AUTHORS. 

and the all but naked compositors wiped 
the sweat from their foreheads, and called 
for water. The thing that was keeping us 
back, whatever it was, would not come off, 
though the loo dropped, and the last type 
was set, and the whole round earth stood 
still in the chokingr heat, with its finder on 
its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and 
wondered whether the telegraph was a 
blessing, and whether this dying man, or 
struggling people, was aware of the in- 
convenience the delay was causing. There 
was no special reason beyond the heat and 
worry to make tension ; but as the clock- 
hands crept up to three o'clock, and the 
machines spun their fly-wheels two and 
three times to see that all was in order 
before I said the word that would set them 
off, I could have shrieked aloud. Then 
the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered 
the quiet into little bits." 

His daily work was to prepare for press 
all the telegrams of the day ; to provide 
all the extracts and paragraphs; to make 
headed articles out of official reports, etc. ; 
to write such editorial notes as he might 



RUDYARD KIPLING. 211 

have time for ; to look generally after all 
sports, out-station and local intelligence, 
and to read all proofs. 

Hard as the work in the office was, he 
found time to write verses and stories of 
his own. Others could see all there was 
to see in that mixed life of British India. 
This young man, however, could not only 
see, but depict, and depict as no one else 
had done the redcoats and the natives and 
the o-overninof classes. He had failed to 
enter the army; but he taught himself the 
speech, the ways, and the thoughts of the 
men in the ranks (remember his "Soldiers 
Three "), and of the commissioned officers, 
from the young lieutenant up to the com- 
mander-in-chief. Before he was twenty- 
five he found himself famous, and not only 
famous, but unique in qualities of observa- 
tion and style among British authors. 



■ s «■;<«-, .ry 7 ■-■tie '"'i 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
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